Oh, Atlantis: A prose poem on celebration of life on the ocean’s shore
Last night the rollers called to us from the backyard of our house on a bluff overlooking the harbor known as First Landing. It’s the budding time and cherry blossoms and horseshoe crabs signal rebirth with bird song and tree peeper heralds raising a cacophony to the warming rays of the sun. You feel the earth hum, your bed facing east, a proper launching pad for what’s to come.
I grab my hoody, shorts and crocs, slip into them on the fly. Yesterday’s leftover coffee heated in the microwave, poured into a to-go mug, my dog Jake close behind. We bounce down the stairs of our second-floor walkup, sunrise at eye level, stairs at our heels. Tell the osprey on their perch we're coming. We’re ecstatic, caffeinated and on our way to the water!
Perhaps we’ll go fishing too.
We’ll walk the wrack line at low tide, turn over Codium, keep our nose in the wind like the shore birds we are, until we drop in the water, let the waves wash us awake once more. This is the only life my dog has known; and I like it fine. We’ve spent hours knee deep in Oceanus swirling together with the silversides and the flounder smolts. Praising the eel grass’ perseverance, bemoaning the Codium wracks insipid intrusion. The easy demeanor of beach house living is simply quiet, you can hear the tide lapping landfall like freshly washed sheets billowing on a clothesline, a place to sit and ponder. Take what you need, leave the rest where it is for some other wanderer.
It’s late May and Jake and I stand here with our toes at the water’s edge, Herring gulls on the hunt overhead, hungry as hell and squawking, a child begging for just a little more time in the tidal pool, wails, a hail of plovers that you hear but do not see, there is no other place for this dream, no other place I’d rather be. I count quahog shells and blessings while singing along with the Psithurism in the scrub oak, straddling the line between music and noises I’ve yet to identify, something left to do some other time, there’s no rush.
Tonight’s pastel sundown will tuck us in amongst the empty lady crab shells and the emptied razor clams strewn amongst the sand, seaweed, and flip flops lost. A friend drops by at dinner time with oysters harvested in Wellfleet, we have sweet corn and slaw bought yesterday at Shaw’s Market, I’ll put them in that picnic basket I bought at the Eastham thrift shop last week, we’ll all take a ride to Race Point in my pal's Subaru wagon in the hopes that we might see a rare right whale, or a sunset with a green flash ending. The whole day was brought to a fitting crescendo wrapped around a fog bank blanket and a driftwood fire on the beach where we can let go the struggle for a moment and dance exultantly in the salt spray like people of the first light we are.