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Back to Issue 3 - Fall/Spring 2013

The Maid on the Shoreline
Stephanie Jones

A sea-spray taped tendril
along the ridge of her cheek.
A riptide in her eyes
as she curses the vicious sea.

Black palms around her howling,
bowed by Northern winds,
care nothing for this beauty
who walks with no prints.

The first time she lives without danger,
her worst fear is herself.
The irony is cutting,
still the Ocean drowns her out.

Corked wood once drifting
now lay where her bones had.
Time, though not her skin,
the tide shows has grown fast.

And every time the Ocean
disturbed from her swells
by the shrieks from the shoreline,
according to tales,

rolls over a shoulder
on a vessel of shipmen,
fine men and young bones
to the Ocean and shoreline.