Again, in keeping with it being National Poetry Month, I’m taking a break from my grandmother’s Landscape with Figures manuscript to post some of her poetry. Today, I give you Divided Viewpoint by Beatrice Allen Page:

Divided Viewpoint

Beating my way along the windy beach

I watched a small bird on stilts

who kept up a teetering pace

in and out of the sea’s last reach

where the shore line tilts

and the waves burst to filigree

and dissolve in lace.

With an eye on each side of its face,

what did the bird see?

With the right eye the waves giving chase

to its skittering retreat;

on the other side, me?

How then could it know in its race

against time and tide, where to jab

its bill in the sand for something to eat?

Or did it, like most of us, blindly replace

vision with chance, hopefully making a stab

at fulfilling its hungers by luck – or by grace?