The Shepherdess Speaks...

The Shipwreck...

The Watcher and the Weeper

How often have I stood along the shore and watched helpless as someone makes shipwreck of their life. I am powerless to do anything but watch as the ship crashes against the rocks. Finally, it breaks apart and goes down beneath the relentless waves.

The warnings have come to all, to those who live along the coast; beware, beware, yet…some would go out despite the counsel, regardless of the pleadings of friend and family, heedless of the dark and ominous clouds gathering along the shoreline. They leave the safety of the calmer harbor, unaware or the danger lurking in the deepening shadows.

After the storm, I walk the shore looking out to sea where once the noble ship anchored beside the other vessels, its colors blowing proudly in the wind. With the morning tide, the wreckage washes upon shore. Pieces; broken parts of what was whole; a sliver of glass, a plank of wood, pages from the book of days, torn and ragged, unreadable, forever erased.

Some escaped alive and come to stand beside me while I gaze at the destruction rolling in with the tide. Their eyes are red and swollen from much weeping. A weeper stoops to loosen an ornately carved framework half buried in the wet sand. The glass is shattered and the wooden frame that once held a familiar likeness is broken.

Looking at me, the weeper says, “Can you fix this?”   

©2013ruthcarmichaelellinger

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