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by Mary Jo Balistreri The splay of light across the deserted beach greets me as if the swish of a broad brush had just swept across polished paper. The air glistens like that, alive with the deep-down freshness that Hopkins speaks of in his poem, God's Grandeur. Water clings to tussocks of sea oats and dune grasses that brush against my arm. In bare feet I walk toward the opening in the fence, scrunching my toes into wetness, enjoying the ooze of sand. At ocean's edge, the surf rolls rather than crashes. Sun catches the top of the wave's trough like the shining in shook foil. Pelicans dive farther out, a ready supply of fish after the storm. With my right foot testing the water, it occurs to me how blessed I am to have been shaped by a landscape of dualities. I pick up a starfish on the sand, throw it back in the water, knowing it probably won't survive. But I'm here, alive at this moment, alive to hear the unbroken sound of the ocean, to see a dolphin leap, and to stir at the sound of your voice, dead all these years, that still walks with me.
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