WBW/F

Pashmina fog.

You can’t really write that, but–“smoky” is cliché, the cat feet brilliance is spoken for and I have a gray pashmina I never wear that is the hue and untouchable texture of  last Saturday morning’s fog.

You cannot write this, either: Wet beach with freckles. Freckled in stones. Mottled by pebbles. Wet beach with freckles in pashmina fog. All this: You cannot write.

I noticed a purple urchin on the wet beach with freckles. Where its insides should have been was a tiny pool of water, glinting for a split-second as I power-walked by. Urchin pool (you can’t write that). Urchin basin (that either). Wrecked pincushion post squall (absolutely not).

I did stop to examine, then abscond with a black scallop shell (in perfect condition and I don’t mean myself, lurchy, a struggle in black—no—don’t ever write that).

For some time I gazed at a beach shack built halfway down the cliff—my future writing pad (but I’ll never tell anyone, so you can’t either). To be up there? An eye-blink from swells, from surf-intimacy? Up there: I wouldn’t be writing this (and neither would you).

Pelican, gull, godwit and piper. Sandstone brushed by a dark wing. The day’s continuous sighs in tide a cormorant lunged through, escaping (nope, can’t write that either).

Bones

The world was water. Rock. Bony driftwood. (Ack! Verboten!)

More of us paused, bent (some of us slyly), lifted trinkets, exiting with beach in our pockets. A crow hunched on wet you-know-what: Sign? Or common drama.

(sigh)

As I was saying…

Beach Shack