Winter beach walk

You walk. Then walk some more, one bare foot in front of the other, sometimes on the beach, sometimes in the water.

You look without focus, more seeing what there is to see, less seeing what you expect to see.

You hear the wind, the murmuring of the bay’s edge, the crunching sand under your feet, the squeaky toy noises of the sandpipers, and the low harrumph of a black-backed gull when you wandered too close.

You feel the sand mold around your feet, the water cutting your legs as you cross from flat to flat, the varying hands of the wind as you scan the gray on gray.

But is the way the bay caresses your nose that you want to remember most. The near metallic hint of salty air carrying particles of life, of death, of the in-between into your nose, less than an inch from your brain, memories of faith in whatever this is is.

But you can’t–trying to hold onto a memory of the air of the wintry beach is like trying to grasp a melancholic memory with your fingers.

You need to walk and walk and walk until you cannot.

(This was after a walk in late December, 2020.)

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