Ocean

Driving, late yesterday afternoon and into evening, sixty miles on I-5 in stop-and-go traffic. Rain and Friday, dark by 4pm. And then a turn to the west, towards saltwater, and a darker way to go, limited visibility for the next 80 miles, off-and-on rain, off-and-on wipers, the defroster turned to high. The radio cutting out. My quiet son beside me, his dry sense of humor.

This poem by Theodore Roethke kept flaring into my consciousness, this passage particularly:

from The Far Field

I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.  

---

Four hours later, we pulled up to this odd "intentional" community, Seabrook....

I hate to use the word quaint, but nothing else fits as well. Lil' suburb'o'the'beach.

Anyway.

What matters is that I'm here with my cancer-in-remission sister, another sister, and various spouses/nephews/girlfriends.

I do not intend to go clamming tonight at low tide (8-ish) with everyone else. A chair by the fire beckons, a glass of wine.