The Sea Keeps No Evening

The sun is setting
over the Aegean.

For a few minutes
the water becomes gold.

No one asks it
to remain.

Perhaps we know
it would not be beautiful
if it did.

For a month
I have watched things pass.

Summer flowers.
Meals at long tables.
Voices in the house.
A friend.

Light moving
across old photographs.

Even the faces
in those photographs
were once standing
where I stand now,

believing, perhaps,
that there would be
another summer.

I have spent so much of my life
asking things to stay.

People.
Places.
Love.
The person I was.

But the sea
keeps no evening.

The shore
keeps no wave.

And still
they are beautiful.

Perhaps not
in spite of this.

Perhaps
because of it.

The last light
rests on the water.

I watch it disappear.

And because I cannot keep it,

I see it.