Sea Walk

I walked out to the sea at midnight.
In the roar of the night sea winds, I crossed opalescent white dunes, and stood spellbound under the hallucinatory glow of a low-hanging full moon. Not a bashful moon, content to gently impart its light in a modest manner, satisfied with the usual soft shadows and gently glimmering waters. This moon was theatrical. Suffused with an intensity of flame, it poured its golden light liberally over all creation, with a passion that enabled the dark sea waters to shine as rolling glass and the soft sands to glitter with such phosphorescence as if composed of a multitude of fairy crystals. This October moon was the author of a night not quite day and a day not quite night. The only solitary soul on the beach, it was as though I walked through a painting, feeling ephemeral and everlasting at the same time. I drank in as much of the restorative scene as I could hold and eventually turned and headed back to the tiny cottage where a big sleepy white dog sat staring out from a screened porch, only barely concealing his exasperation at not being included on this gift of a seaside walk.


I made it up to him the next day when he ran, unleashed and with his distaste of wet feet forgotten, over rocks and into tidal pools with the sort of joy that remains reserved for big dogs on fair beaches.