It was many and many a year ago –
seventy-five or -six summers or so –
near a cluster of cottages by the sea;
I can picture it still in my memory.

I was a child, and she was a child,
and I was solemn, and she was wild,
but we loved with a love that was more than love,
mixed with salt and the sea and the sun above.

We lived through that summer in fairy-tale land –
two sunburnt princesses, hair full of sand.
Then our mothers packed up, and we left with the tide
for our distant home-places; she howled, and I cried.

I waited the next year, but she never came;
and I’m never quite sure I remember her name.

~ Rebekah Choat