Starfish

"This is what life does. It lets you walk up to 
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a 
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have 
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman 
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night, 
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?. . ."

~Excerpt from “Starfish,” by Eleanor Lerman

Awake long before dawn, in the strange time of strange days, Frank and I talk, and I wait for the light to break over the shore. Then, I go out and greet the birds and the sky and the sea, and I feel cheerful and welcome, less worried, and they work their magic on my attention: I see a fisherman in bright orange pants with a pelican and his fishnet on the pier; I see the ibis soaring over the shore with his orange beak and feet; I see a heron fishing, I watch as the heron waits and waits and waits and strikes and gets her prize; I see a snowy egret lifting off from her perch and most of all, I see a starfish, beauty, on the shore and I see the waning moon disappearing into the blue of the morning lagoon. The birds seem to be relaxing around me, trusting me more, letting me get closer and closer to appreciate them in their habitat. I walk and I talk to friends far away. This was the day dear friends were supposed to arrive for a long weekend, but had to cancel. I walk in the striking charm of the day. I go home and I work on a poem I’ve not touched in months and I see the changes I can make, and now it’s in the batch being sent out. There is a supermarket trip to contend with: no parking spaces. No carriages. Long long lines and yet cheerful people pushing their supplies in their wagons with patience. The lines run down the aisles. In the afternoon my other dear friends due to arrive next weekend cancel, and I saw this coming days ago. After dinner, Frank and I drive back to the store for forgotten items and a side trip to Lido Key Beach where we walk holding hands and thinking about all the things there are to think about and the sun is setting, orange ball the color of the ibis feet and beak, the orange ball falling fiery over the horizon of this gorgeous strange day of this changing world. And twenty-eight years ago tonight, in my bed where I lived not far from here in Palm Harbor, Florida just next to Clearwater, I was eating an ice cream Sunday Frank brought me on a Friday night, March 13, 1992, and I was waiting to go into Dunedin Hospital Birthing Center early the next morning where Dr. Wolf planned to induce my labor, my daughter was late, and I didn’t want to have to be induced. And the ice cream was delicious. And then I had my first contraction. And there was no need for an induction. I dreamed and woke, dreamed and woke all night through contractions and then my starfish girl was born in the late morning of her own free will.