“If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”
― Rachel Carson

He will not let me sleep, this Charlie. So, we are out early, as usual, and the sky is clear blue, the air is warm, the trail is solitary, the surf of the Sound is gentle. Along the cliffs, growing in the dry brown clay, I spy a bright and creamy yellow bird’s eye trefoil, a plant doing its best to keep the cliffs from eroding in the drying sunshine. A cheerful sight. I take it slow this morning, I’m tired from so much activity. And I have a plan to meet my son for paddle boarding with the dogs. It’s an effort, but we get the boards down the steep steps, and we get the dogs onto the boards in the mild surf amidst the rocks. Charlie is on my board; Suzi on my son’s. It’s impossible to stand and paddle with Charlie, imbalanced on my board, so I kneel and paddle along; Suzi, on Land’s board is quite content. The clay cliffs rise on one side of us to the sky; the Sound opens in a great blue expanse on the other. A boat here and there dotting the sea. Gulls cry and cormorants wave their wings dry on rocks. We paddle close to shore, evading the rocks just under the surface, and get off the boards and swim in my usual place by the Great Rock. Such a pleasant refreshment. Then, I am smart, and take Suzi for the paddle back. She is quite a wonderful passenger, lying contended as a queen so that I can stand up and paddle us back. Later, I go to the Chilmark Library to work where I can get better Internet, and I send out my monthly newsletter, celebrating my three years of this blog - this month - and then I find my car battery is dead; I drained it while inside. But I find a nice man to jump me and I’m off to Lucy Vincent with my newest book (having finished the Richard Holbrook novel; now I’m reading the Booker Prize winning Pat Barker novel, “The Silence of the Girls.”) Another red flag day on LVB and high tide swirls all along the beach; the waves are wild, so it’s not really possible to swim. Even walking in the shallow surf I’m suddenly swept up and knocked down. Embarrassing, but not harmful otherwise. My youngest and her boyfriend have arrived now. She has this week with her undergraduate degree behind her, and her graduate program ahead. There are tides and waves and wind and sun and tiny beautiful wonderful miracles of pollination that hold on, hold on, and try to keep the clay cliffs from washing entirely away.