Restoration… A Reprise

I don’t “write” these days.  Few people do.  And fewer resort to transcribing their thoughts to paper via cursive text scribbled by pencil or pen.  How archaic, eh?  Most of us now use a human to text interface keyboard of some kind, attached to a motherboard and appropriate programming that induces electrons and their ilk to do our bidding.  In many instances, the keyboard can be eliminated and the programming / motherboard / complex can be coaxed into recording thoughts via the sapien voice. What would that be called?  Who cares… because relatively soon, even that “interface” will have gone the way of the Dodo.  And just by thinking thoughts, electrons will be corralled into doing our bidding.  What will that be called?  Transmutational singularity resonance comes to mind.  (TSR)  Just remember you heard it here first!

Back in April of 2021, I’d just returned from a beach walk in Port Townsend.  I traveled North from the Port Hudson Marina towards Fort Worden and the Point Wilson lighthouse.  The beach there is for the most part, a high bank with access points on the South and North end with little access in-between.  So… I didn’t need to hike too far up the beach to find a comfortable place to sit in seclusion, leaning back against a log, wrapped in my folds of space age insulation.

It was a boisterous day well into the spring season of the Northwest.  Wind being the dominant factor.  The light was ephemeral, shifting between mist, clarity, light, with dominance in the grey spectrum.  My companions:  cobbles, rocks, sand and eccentric boulders, remnants of past glacial activity, spindrift, derelict trees, roving birds and a “romp” of river otters playing grab ass in the shallows and kelp. There’s no better way to describe the behavior of a romp: Grab ass is a good match. TSR being a long way off for many luddites, my brain / fingers / keyboard / motherboard and programming corralled a few zillion electrons to do my bidding back in 2021.  I re-read “Restoration” and determined that revisions were warranted.  The result of regrouping the previously locked in electrons, were unfrozen, reassembled, and refrozen into the following:

Restoration        BF 3/27/2024 revision

Damp sand and grey mist
Chattering wavelets
Tap the soaking cobbles
That occupy the foreshore
Rhythmic
Insistent
Echoes
Born of wind
Transferred by the sea

A lingering meander
North from Port Hudson
Brought me here
Traversing the beach of
Cobbles, gravel, rock, sand

Weather bleached driftwood
The ancient skeletons of trees
Talismans of the past
Plucked from the soil
Carried by the currents
Stranded by the tides
Perfect backrests
For quiet meditation

The tang of the sea
Fills my nostrils
A heady bouquet
Drying and decaying
Flotsom
Bits of kelp
Shells
Barnacles
White streaked foam

Eccentric boulders
Rounded cobbles
Gravel and sand
Remnants
Of the last ice age
Permeate my visual palate
And sensibilities
On a grand scale

A cold Northwest wind
Traversing Juan de Fuca
And Admiralty Inlet
Icy fingers
That prod
Ruffle
And attempt
To penetrate
My silent repose

Goretex
Insulated boots
And fleece lined pants
Keep them at bay

Diving birds
Fly through the water
And the air
They disappear
Only to return
Never more
Never less

Mists flow inward
And through the edges
Of my sight
Bemused by distance
Restrained by inner fog
Bound by illusion
And early spring

Stands of evergreen
Pierce the horizon
And the imagination
Whispering to other sentinels
That frame the sky

The flotsam of the sea
Drifts past
Always moving
Prisoners
Of the tide and current

At the apex
My musing
Calm
Serenity
Composure
An amalgam of belonging