A Trip to the Seashore
by Theodora Goss

You said the waves must love the strand:
look how they reach for her, ceaselessly, ceaselessly
stretching their hands, as though perhaps this time
they might capture her in their translucent green arms,
always reaching but never quite grasping her,
never clasping but breaking and scattering
on the gray rocks,
shattering into white foam.

And then we went home.

(The image is Summer Evening at Skagen Beach by Peder Severin Kroyer.)