Have you ever been to the ocean at night?
Oh it is glorious. It is quite a different place in the evening than it is during the bright cacophony of daylight. The crowds long gone home to dinner or sleep, it is now a quiet place except for the roar of the ocean. Under the cloak of night, the heat has dissipated into whispers of cool breeze. You hug yourself to keep the chill away as you walk along the line of the shore. You feel the intimacy of the ocean so near.
If you were daring enough you would sink into the now cool waters rising up to touch and caress your skin. You feel the salty spray tingle and melt into your calves. Your feet are delicately oozing with wet sand as you pitter patter down the edge of the water. The waves tease you with their endless invitations to feel their nightly fury. The hypnotic beating heart of the sea compels you further inward as the water rises to meet the back of your knees. The moon illuminates your hands and turns them white like moonflowers. Goosebumps rise up on the back of your arms as you feel the ocean breeze turn colder.
You stand there, still, under the blue moon and you think to yourself that this feeling....this union...this love....has been felt by so many and for thousands upon thousands of years. You will not be the first or the last to feel this. But somehow it doesn't matter because it feels like your first breath. Standing there, facing the depths of your love, you can swallow the world whole.
And the moon will forever follow.
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Comments: 24
I just loved this:
"Standing there, facing the depths of your love, you can swallow the world whole.
And the moon will forever follow."
Wow! Brilliantly written and well thought-out. Of course the moon would follow the earth if you were to swallow it along with the tides. Perfect!
I have a very close relationship with the ocean as well, as we ALL do, actually. There's a good reason that the ocean and our bodies share the exact same salt content; we are one in the same! Nice work - you took me there. I spent many nights along the Grand Strand after dark and still recall the quiet beauty.
When I was a young lad, there was a submerged sand bar down at Gulf Shores, about twenty five yards out from the shore. One could walk / wade toward it until the water reached about hip or waist level, then the salty water grew more and more shallow until you were on the sand bar, splashing along in ankle-deep warm Gulf water. I made that walk on several moonlit nights, when the moon was so big and so close...
ahhhh. There really were some good times, in the past. Thanks for helping me remember.