Sand and waves and little toes at play on a winter beach. Chasing, flirting, brushing, teasing, touching, fleeing. Happy squeals. “Everything flows and nothing stands still,” said Heraclitus. He also said, “time is a game played beautifully by children.”
Morning plays along, balmy like a Sunday, a holiday; like the golden, buttery sheen of a warm croissant, the flakes fragile, fragrant. A breeze; fluttering away. Poetry of impermanence.
Take my hand.
Take both, if you want. The Atlantic is warm, like it knows to be gentle with a pair of two-year-olds. Wade, a bit further. There. Lie on your back. The water, my hands will carry you. Don’t be frightened.
Blue, crystalline, and
Bird!
Yes! A cormorant, large and dark and glistening. Long hooked bill, long neck. It coasts, claiming the sky, every open bit above. Spotless expanse, and the sun makes it all glitter, shimmer, bright white.
We squint. Suddenly,
Where did the bird go?
It dove, fifty meters deep into the ocean. Seconds later, it emerges, cocky, beak full, triumphant. Little panicked arms clutch my neck. It’s ok. Look!
The bird stands on the shore, wings outstretched to dry and warm its plumage. Applause!
children imitating cormorants
are even more wonderful
than cormorants
Kobayashi Issa wrote that two hundred years ago. He must have known the two children I watch over now, on their backs; on my arms, on the water, trusting both; floating again. Or he was once a child himself, imitating cormorants. Choosing to stay that way, say yes to life, become a poet.
To live, “live all you can.” Love. “Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love – and to put its trust in life!”
To put theirs into my arms, float on their backs, look up. Flap imaginary wings into the waves as the bird appears again, delights, disappears, shoots up, sprinkling sky: sugar mist.
Two-year-olds at play on a beach no longer quite so warm. It is winter, and everything flows and nothing stands still. “The light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them.”
So I ask: Are you hungry?
Yes!
Voraciously, to life, to a second round of those light, airy, delicate croissants, stuffed – they hope – with chocolate. Yes! To splashing out of the water, all alone now, flapping, squeaking, delighted, imitating cormorants. I follow.
Sand and waves in between toes. In hair, nostrils. Snort. Laugh. Noses, lips: pink. Fingers that, kissed, taste of sea water. “The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us,”
until one day they no longer need me to float on water.