Purple Grey

the purple asters sway
against the sky flat gray,
tread water through summer
and now I'm fading with the light,
a little more each day.

northwestern wind blows,
but we have a place we can go,
a turtle carcass slows or speeds
our hunt for rarities among rocks,
here at the mouth of the bay.

we skim and scan for lightness,
but we find things dead or broken,
glass still unremarkable
from bottles recently smashed,
we throw it back and skim again.

soon we will forget the feeling
of sand under our feet,
will yearn for what we lost
when summer turned to fall,
when we watched ourselves fading,

but the asters still sway,
against the sky smoky grey.