The Shadow Of Your Smile

I watched the 1965 film "The Sandpiper" again, an Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton love story set on beautiful Big Sur seashore. Its main theme music, "The Shadow of Your Smile", has long been among my favorites. The story itself is both poignant and sensual.

The role of the sandpiper is quite tender. She rescues the injured bird on the beach, splints its broken leg - with his awkward help; and throughout the movie, the bird reflects a spirit of reaching for freedom while holding back, as it hesitates to again fly free even after it has healed. She says, "He is making his own prison."

I relate to Elizabeth in a special way. We were both born in February, 1932, just a few weeks apart, so In a way, we grew up together.

I search

The shore

For signs -

A shell.

The sand,

A trinket,

Pebbles.

I find

Too much,

Too little

To be true.

And yet

I know

Whatever it may be

Will come to me

In its due time.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Theme note

Repeating

A distant,

Misty

Melody

Beating

Its pulsation

Underneath,

Pulling in fragments

Gathering the fringes

Toward its central theme

Again ~ as I remember when.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

The Dock

Moon reflection

Flame framed

By ripples

Riding 'long

The shore.

Cool perfect circle

Flies here and there

In random

Dancing shapes

Spitting,

Sprinkling Itself

Across the water.

Then settles back to oneness

At peace once more

With allies.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Had it been too easy,

Either way,

It wouldn't be

Exactly what it is..

As it is

It says a lot

Of what

It might have been

Some other day.

Now,

Too difficult

To say or do.

Impossible

to undo.

Yet as it is -

Is understood.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Last Saturday

Was yours

Had you known it.

Today

Tomorrow

Every day.

Since you knew it not

More is needed.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Growth

Strange how that about which

We are ignorant

Like a peaceful, placid pond

Lies passive.

The surface, if we notice it at all,

Seems only to reflect quietly

Our own flat image.

But upon breaking surface tension,

Whose fragile strength

Separates us from its

Secret depths,

We find to our surpass, perhaps

Another world.

We marvel that we could have been

Content without it.

So then, a little more enlightened

Than before,

We seek another pond,

Its treasures

To explore.

And so

We grow.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Today

To describe it

Requires dimensions

Unavailable.

I know and feel it

Recognize,

Yet undefined.

No definition possible -

Or needed.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Sometimes our oldest, dearest friends

Are most neglected.

Caught up by new experience,

However good -

Forgetting to recall

Those who brought us to them.

We may forget

Him who creates ourselves

As new experience of

Himself.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay