Sitting in the dunes as high tide erased the shoreline, I understood I could pay for this. It was just cool enough that the warm midday sand warmed my legs and the sun felt temperate. Fisherman and their fishing families, fishing children, fishing clusters of generations – all casting, looking to the horizon for a gift from the ocean.
My straw hat’s wide brim was down, shading my face. Your round Ralph Lauren sunglasses kept me shielded. I watched the waves, the sound and rumble matching the tingling of my limbs. A lone fin glided through my sight line. The surf was constant and I could make out 2 dolphins making their way up the coast about 70 yards off the shore. The overcast sky made their skin look black. Their rhythm was staggered. Down under the surface they stayed longer under and then quickly breaking the surface. They disappeared for a minute… I thought I had lost them. Then I saw a jerk and single splash 20 feet of the shore. What I had imagined I saw became a shark, snatching something from the fisherman, who at the sight of that dark mass making a quick kill – turned to one another in shock – In moments they were back to their dull sport of cast, wait and reel in.
Seagulls started swarming in a funnel above a school of fish, A long line of birds ran from north to south slowly joining the swirl… wilder, faster and round and round. Slow smooth energy feeding into a mass tornado, a soul, your life force joining with others, free swirling with the wind, spreading together and then disappearing down the coast.
Holding awe, heaviness, melancholy, my right hand dug deep into dune sand mindlessly making pattern play with its grains. This is how the ragged cuts of a bleeding heart, inks it’s surroundings – scabbing, flaking and scarring – returning to a rhythm of memory.