Her Prayer

She stood on the beach in the balmy remedy

of cheering sunlight and enchanting sea;

she understood the language of the wind

discoursing with the lunging waves,

and with the breeze a prayer comes to her mind,

then like with this moment assigned,

as toward the water she braves,

the sea thrusts a bottle upon the shore,

she picks it up as if expecting more

than just the old green glass, a note inside

perhaps? No, nothing it contains,

a wonder the sea was its guide

to land. Is it now abandoned by abandonment?

Would it prefer to be lost on the planes

than at sea? Or is it a request sent?

She has no note to put inside the bottle

and to cast back to the beautiful water

as if she were the ocean’s serving daughter;

instead she whispers that prayer in the glass,

that she yearns with grit of a saint will come to pass,

that she may for ever by the sea dwell.