at beach's end -

I saw her footprints daub the sand no other tracks to show, just then late afternoon, near August's end a meeting that we hadn't planned I'd left in spite of stormy skies deciding ‘midst a whim, I’d go to watch the tidal ebb and flow and get the late-day’s exercise I'd seen her car parked in the lot no other combers there that day the weather dour and dismal gray (a troubled feeling, I then fought) I hadn't planned to meet her there my heart pulsed faster, thinking of the chance of seeing my true love and might just catch her, unaware I could not see far down that shore the mist and fog thick as they were but still, I searched for signs of her the bright red coat she always wore I saw one set of tracks that showed a-winding north-ward to the rocks that place we’d often share for talks below the narrow Prout’s Neck Road I spied, thru brume, the cliffs ahead high, stretching skyward in the fog there, down below, our favorite log where lay her jacket, clean and red it seemed a grand mistake to me no HER, and yet no footprints back just pressed in sand, a single track that wound into the darkened sea I looked and looked for other signs (inside my heart the horror burned) but no tracks from the surf, returned and then … I saw those dreadful lines in broken shell she'd etched one note "forgive me, love", so spoke the sand I knew to where she’d gone then, and sat down and hugged her fav’rite coat. ~ * This is a form I created called “Eodemina”, made up of at least FOUR stanzas of four lines of Iambic Tetrameter, each stanza beginning with the SAME letter, (of the poet’s choosing), and all in Enclosed Rhyme. I hope you like it. Fellow poets - why not give it a try! * ~ 1st Place ~ in the "Love Story" Poetry Contest, Silent One, Sponsor. ~ 1st Place ~ in the "Your Very Best Rhyme of All-Time Poetry Contest", Brenda Chiri, Sponsor.