On the Shore Path

Walked out long before daybreak and took the sea path toward town. Instantly I was glad, for there are wetlands there, full of teeming and skittering life, which I could hear if not see. I was swollen with the greatness of the sea and the endless sky. I came back and sat in the Marriot lounge (having bought coffee from Starbucks) and wrote a poem on the backs of advertising menus  for their Thanksgiving buffet, Acquired some bagels and went out again when dawn was finally breaking. The light from the east– which seems to be the end of the long Bay– came pinkish and lavender and goldish and silver, and the gulls were flying amidst it. I fed the bagels to the gulls. On shore were scores of birds, plovers and avocets and sandpipers and Canadas and coots, and beneath a wooden bridge, a pair of egrets and a great white heron. It has been a long time since I was so happy. I sometimes mock Wordsworth’s “Nature was to me then all in all,” but it’s a hypocrisy, for I would say the same myself, nor have I, as he did, left that behind. Writing now in my silly room, the tingle of the sea air still on my cheeks.