In which the sea is silent

There is light in abundance now, though there have been summer storms.
Entering the sea without a splash, I slip along the sandy bottom, holding onto the corrugations, until I am under and past the rolling swell, all scales shining, deep in the sea.

The sea speaks not.

I listen, and hear only the vague distant clinking of things colliding, the repeated hush, hush hush of waves rolling along the surface.
There is almost complete silence, and it seems at this minute, that it ever has been.

Are you there, I ask.


The sea speaks not.
I hear nothing.

From down here on the sandy floor, I look up towards the sky, with not much more than a sand whiting for company, and even it looks at me in a startled way with one big eye and swims off. The surface billows silver, from down here in the blue, and the sea speaking not a word. So silent. I hold my breath for quite some time.
Air flows from the lacy fronds in my chest, into the flow of my blood: tiny rivers. The quiet continues.

Boats drift across the horizon.


On my return to shore, I turn to see one green wave folding in on itself, the sun flashing through, curling along with its plume of white. I frame it between my two hands, and press it hard into a shape, a concentration of the green, and the light and the salt, and form it into a pointed thing, a shard, like a piece of the universe.
This shard I plunge it into my heart: I lodge it there, where it will be safe. I plunge it there, with all the grace I can summon. I don’t cry, like a child, I hold it there, firmly.
A sharp fragment of green, embedded in my heart. I feel it with each breath.
I will hold it there, ever onward.

I can wait, I tell the sea.

I turn to leave then, my footprints thread the sand , pocked from last nights rain.
At the top of the cliff I look over the horizon where a million silver suns are shining. The stone that seems to have found its way into the palm of my hand travels an arc as I throw it, all the way, into the surface of the silent sea.
The words I say unheard by all but wind and water.


I head up the hill for home
.