Dawn breaks the darkness in a hazy glow of red and gold above deep distant blue that seems to go on forever. The beach is quiet, the shorewalk empty, old-timey heavy brass street lanterns are the only ones awake with me at this hour — shining.
Have you ever thought about the way old pains dissipate? Like salt in the seawater, they just dissolve and heal over. You don’t even think of them anymore. There are, of course, wounds that never fully heal, but time numbs them and with each cycle of the rising and setting sun more peace seeps into the emptiness. (Is this true of big massive heaping pains? I am fortunate enough to have never felt one, but surely they must eventually scab over, one cannot bleed forever…)
Look up. Sky brighter, waves calmer, glow growing, dawn inching along silent and mysterious behind the shadow cloud horizon. Three little birds scamper along the part of the wet sand that was illuminated by the full moon’s beam of shadow light the night before. A ship emerges far in the distance from the fluffy cloud fog that rests on the horizon of the great Atlantic.
Have you ever thought about the way nothing makes sense in the moment, yet as hours & days & years pass, the sun of hindsight, the light of wisdom, rises over your previously limited perception and you realize what you did not know before — the teachings of tribulations lap onto the shores of time and the past is illuminated by understanding. It had to happen that way so you could learn & grow & re-emerge; so that the whims of oceanic fate could regurgitate your fragile complex bones here on this sandy beach.
Look up. Sky peachy pink and pale yellow. Silver birds with long legs strut along the shore with a confident knowing — the knowing that they are intrinsically of this beach, they belong amidst the sand & sea, and they need not be bothered with these human things.
Human thoughts. What are thoughts anyways? Mere reflections on the shimmering salt waves of our big round heads? Mirrors of our minds which reflect upwards the intangible feelings of our hearts? Random spatterings of seagull shit on the windshield of morning? Indefinable uncontainable whisps of seabreeze wind that blow into our hair-covered skulls and out again with the whims of things we do not understand and probably never will, but think about anyways because thoughts always beget more thoughts.
But the sea, the blue sea, the dream sea, the salt-filled whale-swimming wave-rushing sea does not think of me. She is far too busy birthing pastel sunrises and fiery balls of light out of the womb of her endless horizon.
Look up. Mermaid-colored bay. Massive flock of ducks in a V-shaped southbound celebration, and a fuschia crown enshrining the sun as she emerges from the water behind the lighthouse and bathes us all in the Light of Life.
