Cynthia Trenshaw

Bereft

At the water’s edge, waves churn sand and stones
in ceaseless rhythmic promise-and-reveal –
a game of chance conducted by a salty croupier.

I trawl, head down, hands clasped behind
my angled back – flawless beach-trove hunting form –
searching barefoot for the treasures of the day.

Just when I reach for a lovely shiny stone,
a curling wave extends his hand
to claim it; after the slurry clears the stone is gone.

Sometimes regret that weighs the most
is not what has been had and lost,
but what was longed for and never held at all.

Cynthia's first nonfiction book - Meeting in the Margins: An Invitation to Encounter Society's Invisible People - was published in October 2015 (She Writes Press). She has been a hospital chaplain, a midwife to the dying, a massage therapist to the homeless on the streets and under the viaducts of large cities. She lives on Whidbey Island WA.