What can you make of this image?
Liminal couple
They walk the tide-line sands
bare-footed, toeing the ooze.
No longer holding hands,
no longer able to choose
other than listening to their news.
Between the sand and sea –
like walking in the margin
of a shared certainty –
they’ve felt a limit begin,
sensed the long circularity
they have travelled – like rind
protecting, containing them –
has begun to feel unkind,
too shallow a bowl to stem
their need to overflow its rim.
The tide is coming in fast
washing away footprints they left
like a promise they can’t trust
themselves to keep, like the heft
of change they can admit to at last.
Jim Friedman
Liminal couple
They walk the tide-line sands
bare-footed, toeing the ooze.
No longer holding hands,
no longer able to choose
other than listening to their news.
Between the sand and sea –
like walking in the margin
of a shared certainty –
they’ve felt a limit begin,
sensed the long circularity
they have travelled – like rind
protecting, containing them –
has begun to feel unkind,
too shallow a bowl to stem
their need to overflow its rim.
The tide is coming in fast
washing away footprints they left
like a promise they can’t trust
themselves to keep, like the heft
of change they can admit to at last.
Jim Friedman