Rock face

[First published 2017-04-07 as @Maud_Pie_poet in connected tweets]

Some days I am flinty, standing tall
Dark and hard. My obsidian face
Reflects your gaze
I am impenetrable.

Other days, I flow;
A windblown dune
Whose shape and location
Will not be the same tomorrow.

But today
I will be a canvas
Of newly dried sediment
Still moist and impressionable -

If the sandpiper skitters across me
I will feel his touch
And capture his passage,
for a time,
In hieroglyphic footprints.

If you happen to pass
Before the tide rises to wash them away
Please, send me a translation.
I do not speak Sandpiper.