“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.” ― Mary Oliver

(h/t Bethany Kraft)

How to describe the scene on Saturday? Even as I studied it, trying to impress the view into my mind, I knew words would never be enough. It was the kind of sky that would refuse to cooperate with a camera – pictures would be but a wan retelling. A painting might convey the essence if the canvas spread large and sacred – the ceiling of a chapel, for instance, or a Grand Central-type Station. A place resounding with journey, spiritual, literal, both.

To the west, ocean like molten glass, lifting, curling, peeling, settling, the white foam triangulating across the blue. Clouds stretching out like God’s hand has cast forth this magic, the heel of his palm just off Trinidad head, the fingers reaching overhead. The clouds and the sky around them drift purple, pink, lavender, warm shades of blue. To the north, distant bright hills silhouetted against increasing darker mountains, flat like paper cutouts one behind the other. Eastward, beach rising into sand dunes, muted foliage an afterthought below the foghorns. Behind the dunes, more mountains, green, like the sky on this side of the world. Patches between cotton balls gleam an aqua that would drive a painter crazy trying to mix. The jetty pokes out on the south side, dolosse like car-sized children’s jacks piled against the rocks and concrete jutting into the sun’s rays. A lone fisherman stands on the farthest edge, his frame and rod a quick sketch, “put a fisherman here.” Out beyond the jetty, an eruption of spray causes me to gasp and then cry out, “Whales!” as if I’m a child seeing a puppy for the first time. I’m drowning in beauty. I cannot breathe from it. But I don’t need to; the world is breathing for me.