We walk alone on the beach.
Two ships sail by.
The gulls are thick as snow on the rocks;
And the light is sorrowful in the sky.
The purpose of life is hidden and grey
as the clouds
That sniff the high rocks like white hounds.
Life is fragmentary and brief as the clouds
And the toppling sand mounds.
Surely we are like these things that touch
us:
The half tones, this cool pleasant wind,
The shells drying on the sands, the straggling seaweed.
We are like these things, impermanent and unpinned.
—Madeline
Gleason
from The Metaphysical Needle, 1949
Published with permission of the Estate of Madeline
Gleason.
Reprinted in the Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley's
Poetry Walk
Edited by Robert Hass and Jessica Fisher. Heyday Press,
2004.
This is one of 126 poems on panels set in the sidewalks
of Addison Street.
