Morning

Morning

It’s dawn.

A flight of gulls enters my vision ten o’clock high, nine of them, combat air patrol. They hold a rough formation, to let you know that they  can, but every one is a hot shot pilot, doing his own thing as an individual. It appears that one nearest me waggles his wings, a universal greeting from low-flying aircraft.

The rabbits are on the lawn, munching away, not a care in the world, the nearest natural enemy a 30-mile ferry ride away. From their diverse sizes I can tell they are multi-generational. I make a mental note to carry a flashlight if I go to the pool at night because I don’t want to run into the great-grandfather in the dark.

The horizon has been devoured by the mist. A ghostly grey descends into a stolid slate but I can’t identify a line of demarcation. The dune grasses are barely moving. There is a stillness about, no wind, the silent reverence one encounters in a religious ceremony.

Only the waves are audible. They crash in their unending, timeless crescendo against the beach, muted somewhat by the short distance from the house, but fearsome nonetheless.  The scent in the air is of life—terrestrial, submerged, and airborne—but mostly of the inexorable sea itself.

I sit here as though in a birth process, an awakening, another beginning.

It’s dawn, in Nantucket.

© Alan Weiss 2013