It's probably a crime to walk on the beach on a day like today.
The cold silk of the silver-green sea billowing like a ball gown,
The grebe riding it up and down with a joy I feel inside my own body.
This bird's long throat stretches down from its black feathered cap, and it's hard to say
which is more breathtaking--that white neck or the sweet froth that spreads into the sand.
And then there's the pelican, rising from its seaward plunge back into the sky, exposing the tender filament that connects us all to the heavens.
So dig my shallow grave, pleasure police, bury me here in the sand where
I might hear the siren call of the fog horn as I breathe my last.
note: I read somewhere that Oxnard was nearly given the name Zahara in reference to its soft pale sandy beaches. Zahari is derived from the Greek word Zahari, meaning sugar.
2 comments:
That is beautiful, Denise. I need that right now so badly. I need that water and that sand and that sky. I am craving it to my bones.
Beyond your words on my phone screen as I read this I paused to look out to my beach. I call my birds "little cuties", "king", "bobbers". I must move away in a few weeks and am savoring this place too. There is a line in a movie where an old Japanese undertaker delights so profoundly in his meal he proclaims through a mouthful, "I hate myself". Reading your blog today led me to be in a moment of awe and gratitude. Reminds me of being on a road outside of London lined with rhododendrons as tall as houses, and thinking that if the car turned around and took me right back to the airport the two hour stay would have been worth the trip. Oh, the seashore. I die.
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