An old seafarer stands ashore looking upon the water in contemplation of his life - remembering the past and reckoning his future. His gaze falls upon a tree alone on the distant hill. The Tree of Life? A harbinger symbolizing a connection to the afterlife?
In the poem 'Crossing the Bar', Alfred Lord Tennyson metaphorically ascribed the ebb and flow of the tide to the passage of life and that one would 'hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crost the bar.'