Lost In The Dunes, Florence, Oregon

It was a dark day Overcast and cold An unlikely day in the Middle of a typically sanguine Oregon summer The wind swept through The dune grass through Each layer of clothing Like a surgeon's scalpel, it cut Deep into the bone We paused at the crest of a Towering mount of sand My wife and I The ocean churning Before us Wild and free A powerful gust Taking me by surprise Knocked me slightly off my feet And as I stumbled I felt My ring, my wedding ring Slip so easily and fall Off my stiffened finger My flesh contracted In the chilling salt sea air I froze immediately Where I stood Thinking surely I would find the ring Lying but a short distance At my feet But as I searched My eyes scanning every Inch of ground Sloping down the sea's side way No golden glint to give its Hiding place away Till finally falling to my knees In desperation Digging frantically Not understanding how Such a simple thing Which should so obviously be Situated on the surface of Our known understanding The way things ought to be Yet here should so mysteriously Disappear This precious object Holding a power I hadn't realized The bond that somehow Forged two into one A commitment embodied In the perfect whole of that Circle of gold And my mind wandered over the dunes Relentless like the wind Taking me back to my wedding day And seeing that ring first placed On my finger But now It was gone, like life itself It seemed to me Gone forever in an instant Stolen by a gust of wind And buried in the unforgiving sands Of time Gone. With every memory and every dream. When I walked away Surrendering to my fate Broken-hearted, desolate, alone My wife unable to console me A stranger offering platitudes "It's only a ring. Rings can be replaced." But I knew I had left something far Far greater behind A part of myself, an innocence lost An illusion shattered and a truth revealed Someday maybe someone will find that ring A curiosity and a bit of good fortune Perhaps on an otherwise rather dull day But the story behind it will never be told The time and the place when it mattered The two hearts it bound together These things are always lost, aren't they? And we who march on Not knowing and not caring Never realizing the broader significance Of seemingly inconsequential things Are left strangely remote Buried in our own indiscriminate lives Like that precious ring In a misfortunate drift of sand. ~ Laurence Overmire