By Fleda Brown
Dear friend, you were right: the smell of fish and foam
and algae makes one green smell together. It clears
my head. It empties me enough to fit down in my own
skin for a while, singleminded as a surfer. The first
day here, there was nobody, from one distance
to the other. Rain rose from the waves like steam,
dark lifted off the dark. All I could think of
were hymns, all I knew the words to: the oldest
motions tuning up in me. There was a horseshoe crab
shell, a translucent egg sack, a log of a tired jetty,
and another, and another. I walked miles, holding
my suffering deeply and courteously, as if I were holding
a package for somebody else who would come back
like sunlight. In the morning, the boardwalk opened
wide and white with sun, gulls on one leg in the slicks.
Cold waves, cold air, and people out in heavy coats,
arm in arm along the sheen of waves. A single boy
in shorts rode his skimboard out thigh-high, making
intricate moves across the March ice-water. I thought
he must be painfully cold, but, I hear you say, he had
all the world emptied, to practice his smooth stand.
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I had a chatty Wednesday -- my three high school friends (it was Kay's birthday) on Google Meet in the morning, then lunch with Paul, then the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring with Kristen and Laurie, with whom I've been friends since I first saw it (we've seen it so many times that we did a lot of talking over the movie). Then Paul and I went for a walk in the neighborhood in gorgeous weather.
Unfortunately the Mariners had a terrible evening pitching at home following two great ones in Toronto, though a couple of players hit well. We watched the penultimate episode this season of Gen V -- kind of predictable and a little frustrating -- and I've been reading China Mieville's The City & the City a procedural with a really interesting sci-fi twist. Some shopping pics from the beach at Ocean Shores:
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