It
always begins the same.
Some morning, his feet will disappear into a turbid and
shallow, leg-lapping tide of April.
Somewhere from a stone-strewn sand or mucky, marl marsh flat or
tidal-weed-washed or dead-reed-framed shoreline along the Raritan’s lower
reaches.
There, his fingertips will wriggle and wrangle to wedge under
a familiar flap’s sewn hem, prying for a firm-enough grip to its skin of Dacron
sailcloth. Squeezing for a bond that may
finally silence the enduring tensions of time and encourage an unfolding pull
upward. One that will suddenly saturate
the surrounding salty air with its distinct tearing-sound of Velcro’s virtue
roaring awake, as if it were perceived with the similar signature of alertness heeded
to the solid, deep snapping and splintering of timber beginning to fall. Unstoppable
change, set in-motion.
For him, these few parting seconds of time are nothing more
than one man’s proclamation of revival and return. Of a stirring seasonal apogee of time and tide,
now steadfast turned in favor. For the spoils
of a long-awaited emergence from a hibernal abyss and its cold clasping confines
of wintertide emptiness. For his
spirit’s resultant submergence into
an aqueous realm of springtide abundance and Nature’s forthcoming draw of
curtain to fill his eyes with her dreamy colors of genesis.
Sounded is one surfcaster’s startling crack of thunder,
heard rolling and rumbling across the many distant and untried dunes of sandy
shoreline signaling his return like a sudden change in the weather. A storm, soon enough, that will rain of cascading
casts slicing, air whisking, driving downpouring descents of bodies plastic and
metal and wood, splashing distant seawater with a rhythm of raining dimples and
rings emanating and promises piercing.
The air of the sea, punctured by this angler’s ambush of sound, sweeps
over a liquid layer of quietude. His
surf bag, is opened. Finally fallen
awash in the orange-colored glisten of early light, he eyes its deep row of
tubes lined with the trebled testaments of dependable color and form. A pretense of reflection for what is to now
ensue over the giving months ahead.
Inhaled alas, is the momentous moment when shadows finally
fold down to this precipitous pouring of light, where sight seeks the unseen,
withheld somewhere under the glassy gleam of glints and march of riffles, as time
generously unravels from within the curling wave, and in his mind, everything
seems split-open with the immutable and indelible gestures of remembrance.
He pauses to muse, in that it’s simply the separating sound
of a fabric tearing apart that has welcomed him back the many fathoms of time
and miles of memory. But far more, it’s
one accompanying his suddenness stirring in thought and action. Again,
for more. One ordinarily insignificant,
inconsequential, and inconsiderable detail of routine that will otherwise incite
the many memories of his wading in the stirring foam of a sea that may again flood
through his mind as it does over his body with the sudden and invigorating intensity
of one of her fallen, rushing wave’s cast ashore does seethe and storm over his
ankles. As witness, born anew of her unflinching
temperament. For more, again.
By parting ways of a fabric, he imparts a solidarity in
these parting seconds with the fabric of realization that is his common
existence unfolding anew. Always, for more.
And so it
is heard. By virtue of finned-fortune and the contribution of his unpredictable,
seaward-seeking footfall, it’ll never end the same.
