learning to read water and sky

I made it home. I made it to the ocean—my ocean, the Pacific. Bathwater warm and black sand. The sand cradles my body. It’s like holding hands. We press against each other and drift in and out of delirious sleep. I confuse my own breath with the slurred whispers of waves.

Two little boys fly a kite from atop a rock island. It catches the last sun in gasps whipping back and forth. Peachy cream curls with silhouettes floating through open sleeves. The sun sets red in the west, and the moon rises orange and upside down like a bowl. We think for the first time in years how the moon we see is an illusion, our angle of reflected light. Somehow the earth feels the same.

How strange that we have only one word for light when there are so many experiences of it. We should have thousands of words to describe the intimacy of each relationship: the rose of sun on ocean ripples—maritessia; the brilliant corona on a blue day—shontan; the first glow on mountain outlines—spectoscura. How can we have one word to describe all of existence, all of energy, and not recognize that we are all one?

A star falls on an arc long enough to breathe but not create a dream. In the glow a massive boulder struggles to break free from the sand. Front flippers rise and press down but without water are too weak to lift the massive shell-cased body where it lies. She strains her neck and eyes bulge and search for answers and find mine. I want to help her but I see the trail she has made up and down the beach, the slow progress of primal nature, smooth belly stokes punctuated by fin prints, and I know she will make it back alone. A great wave comes and wraps around our feet and lifts her body back to the ocean. She’s gone. I silently pray for her baby.