The Woman by the Bay

It’s one thing to be left behind by someone

that you once loved more than life.

It’s another to have gotten that love

after so much of your life alone.

That’s the tale of the woman by the bay.

She sits on the beach with a scarred heart

and a tear dragging the ink from her eyes.

Her silence is speaking for her.

She is saying: I loved him

and I will not find another like him.

I go and sit by her, put my arm around her,

and tell her it’s going to be alright.

She says how she has been alone,

and how men aren’t attracted to her

as if it’s a curse.

I can sympathize with her on that one.

I tell her of my curse.

That how I’ve learned from women,

how I know what it is that they want,

and how I know that I’m not part of that list.

She says how she will be alone again

because she is not as beautiful as the posers

on the magazines and in the movies.

Bullshit.

We are in the land of the blind,

And, while I am no king, I can say

only one true thing about this

woman by the bay

As I look at her watching the ocean,

hoping to see the dolphins,

and rubbing her feet with red sox

in the warm sand.

I see that she is one of the most
beautiful women I’ve ever seen.

Excerpt from my book Madness in a Recession available now on print or Amazon Kindle.