September

We just got home from the beach. In Jersey we call it the shore. This shore from which we've come is in North Carolina. Emerald Isle to be exact. Two years ago we honeymooned there and have gone back to the same place since. There's nothing to do except be. Admittedly, being at the shore is considerably easier than being other places. There's waking up and watching the sunrise with your first cup of coffee. There's reading on the deck. Did I mention the deck hangs over the beach? Then there's saying good morning to a sleepy eyed bare-footed young lady. She sleeps in 'till 7:00 or so. Then there's the morning walk on the beach. Two grocery bags go along, one to pick up garbage and one to bring back treasures. There’s very little of the former, but there are always heavy twisting conch and freckled scallop shells in various stages of wear, jingle shells shimmering in the palm like doubloons in a stream, and oysters, lumpy digits worn, all worn and smoothed and crenulated and carved by the sea, the ceaseless sea.
You get the rhythm. It doesn’t belong to our agendas. It coincides with the sun and the wind and the tides. Its sound track is laced with the speech of laughing gulls and the dry crackle of sea grass. And under it all is the karumph of the waves finding the shore.
We just got home from the beach, but no matter what the calendar says, September hasn’t claimed me, yet. I still have sand in my shoes. I have been washed up here, worn, washed, smoothed and carved by the sea, the ceaseless sea.