POETRY: Beachcombing | South Seattle Emerald

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by Jeffrey Rindskopf

There’s you
Then there’s others’ you.
They’ll take what they need
Whether you know it or not.
I’ll never see anything quite so beautiful
As my rear view of you.
In the war for people’s hearts
Being there is half the battle,
The other helped who you’re there for.
Do tell how strange and prickly you are
So I won’t feel as alone.
Some people have a cliff
Between their sunny plateau and dark abyss
They spend their whole lives skirting
Before the Great Fall draws a crowd.
As for me, while no one’s looking I’ve graded a slope
So every few evenings, I’ll walk me down to the shore
Change into something nice and collect the shells I find
On a good feeling they’ll glint some way in the light.
The cars on I-5 never seem to mind
But the beachcombers know
How far out there this goes.

Jeffrey Rindskopf is a fiction and poetry writer based in West Seattle, specializing in culture and mental health. He was raised and graduated film school in Orange County, California, before moving to Seattle to begin his career as a freelancer.

📸 Featured image: Photo by Melanie Hobson/Shutterstock.com.

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