Early morning beach walk.
Mist for miles makes the cliffs look soft and my skin tingle.
The only footprints I see are from seabirds.
I'm suddenly aware that if a belt out a song,
Ethel Merman style, no-one would know.
Moved by the romance of the moment, I take a deep breath
and dive right into a song before it hits my brain
that I don't know the words.
I improvise. The tune eludes me too. Hmmm...
accurate in my mind but foreign to the universe.
Who cares--- I'm alone in it.
Three seconds into a note that probably
should NOT have been held,
I whirl around, drunk with joy, and get slapped by
a sobering humiliation that stops me in my tracks.
I must have been really sauntering down that beach,
because, I tell you, when I started out
there was no-one around.
Just me, slipping into the fog alone.
Now, there are hundreds of people
stretching for miles,
sharp figures against a bright sky.
Two gray-haired ladies in sun hats and fanny packs
are at the lead, no more than 8 feet behind me.
They each give me a rosy-cheeked smile.
I pretend to have a coughing fit and let the
swarm of health enthusiasts pass me by.
