This is something I wrote in early 2005 not long after moving to Cape Cod and after an inspirational visit to one of Cape Cod's many beaches. I may live in the mountains now, but I will always be an ocean girl at heart.
- o -
Can you feel it? Just there, it’s something in the air, something in the light, a promise that you can almost touch, a wish that is about to come true. A wish you never knew had been this strong.
I am sitting on a rock by the beach and only twenty feet away the surf is rolling onto the thick piles of seaweed. The light is ethereal, illuminating everything with a subtle glow, that seems to lie in the sea, the air, the clouds, and the sky alike. It is almost seductive, it touches you like a lover’s enticing gaze that means to say ‘Let’s play.’
I take off my shoes, climb down from the rocks, and wade into the surf. The fine sand molds itself around the soles of my feet and awakens their sleepy senses. The waves swirl around my ankles and recede to wash away the sand from under my feet only to return again as I sink deeper and deeper into the sand. My eyes are wandering along the curves of the coast, the horizon and land lying in the distance.
I close my eyes and feel the wind play with my hair and whisper little melodies into my ear. Can you hear me too?, I wonder. Can you hear me in my ear, as I hear you in my ear? I open my eyes and there is nothing out there that I could identify with the whisper I hear and yet there are whispers everywhere, in the leaves, on the waves, in the sand. An invisible player is making music on the instruments of nature.
I pick up a shell from the beach and let the tips of my fingers discover the shape and the palms of my hands absorb the roughness.
In the sky above a formation of migrating geese moves through the air supported by another invisible whisper. In fluid motions the birds wind their way through the space between here and there, between the sea and the sky, the land and the horizon, moving towards an imaginary point in the distance. Their elegant meanders in the air are mesmerizing. What tells them where to go, I wonder?
The legs of my trousers are soaking up the waves that are burying me in the sand so I start walking. I walk engulfed by the sounds of the waves, the whisper in the leaves and in my ears, the echoes of the birds. The sounds are all there seems to be. You can close your eyes and know your world by the whispers that turn into music. Or you can know it by the touches that turn into shapes, or the smells that turn into life.
My wish is to turn the whisper into a roar of joy and to dance with the waves. To feel the sand under my feet turn into a million musical notes, the birds above me into a score of dancers, and the shell in my hand into a vessel that carries me into the untamed beauty of it all.
I am sitting on a rock by the beach and only twenty feet away the surf is rolling onto the thick piles of seaweed. The light is seductive, like a lover’s gaze. There is a promise in the air. Was I dreaming or did my wish just come true?
Images: Top - Nobska Lighthouse and Nobska Beach, Woods Hole, MA - November 3rd, 2005
Bottom - Sunset on a Cape Cod Beach - December 9th, 2006