Dover Beach

Dover Beach

Those white cliffs rumbled like something very old and very slow. Encased in sight and sound he found himself hesitating. Like a man who hears the gulls crying and finds it necessary to sob in harmony he stumbled to the edge… his hair became flames in a powerful wind. The waves smashed at barnacled crags and fissures like some gigantic beast attacking the ground he stood on – water flung itself into the air as he looked up, breathed in, breathed out, suffocated in the pine and salt air that was his everything and crumpled like a newspaper in a rainy street of blue and meaningless. Curling his arms around his cold knees he hid his face from a metallic sky that seemed to think him a coward. … then, as the sun shone green and the day had gone, he looked up to feel a stiffening of his skin. The day had died inside of him, but somehow he knew morning was only a few hours away. Gulls swirled overhead as his depression became trees, the ocean and something infallible... yet, ephemeral.