Tide and Time Served

In Maine, there’s a path that skirts the rockbound coast from Perkins Cove to Ogunquit Beach: the Marginal Way. Beverly and I walked there last Sunday. The weather had cooled from the mid-spring temperatures of the past few days and there was a stiff breeze from the northwest, but still for early March in Maine it was a stunning day. The sky was clear and the sea a brilliant blue. The tide etched the coast with white foam as we walked the shore downeast.

Where the Ogunquit River flows into the Atlantic, waves swelled and the water along the amber sands of Ogunquit Beach turned an inconceivable silvery blue. There were two surfers bobbing in the water, silhouettes in wetsuits. Every now and then, one would rise from the sea and trace the surf with his board, as if discovering a cursive script the gods themselves had written. We watched the words they wrote and trembled at the sentences they told.