What a feeling of freedom there is, to be sitting by the water wearing only skinny bits,
to feel the dry, thick weight of just your skin, to feel the sun on it,
to hear the slooshing of the water, and to devour a thick sandwich
and packed smoked mussels straight from the tin, ripping apart the bread
and sopping up the smokey oil,
while a duck eyes you sideways,
mulling the pros and cons of snatching some tasty morsels.
A feeling of freedom and lust,
as you smear the tin clean and suck and smack your oily fingers,
push the plate aside and sign with satisfaction
and roll over to meet the hot towel underneath you.
I gorge on summer now, without feeling any guilt.
It only comes once a year.
I buy berries by the bushel, and eat them with everying––
ice-cream, pies, salads, stuffed in layers of pancakes.
Basking, basking, basking in blinding light, I sit or lie and do nothing
for the sole purpose of feasting my eyes on scenery, telling them
willing them they’d better remember what this looks like,
what this feels like, this decadence of summer,
which like all good things, comes to an end.
I think I learned this from my father.
He likes to go places and rough it up, independent and self-sufficient
and never denying himself enjoyment of things because he understands the simplicity of it.
For example, if my dad felt the need to pack a lunch of the best sandwiches to take on a hike, he knew where to get them, and didn’t think twice about driving all the way in-land,in the heat, to get them.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, he said.
He knew that sitting on top of a cliff, looking out at the sea, feeling the sun on your bare skin
and eating the best sandwiches you could get,
was to grab the best of life in your hands
and fill yourself up with it, and it was a simple thing, comparatively, to go far for a good sandwich.
And then to top that off with a plastic cup full of sun-warmed wine.
My dad would, when we were lying on the beach,
start climbing hills in his speedo, his taught, crimson-brown skin and wiry muscles.
He would find an old discarded bucket and fill it with figs, grapes, prickly pears, and peaches
and come back triumphant, a shadow on our towels and a big grin.
See? he would say, how the Lord provides?
When I’m outside all day, in the sun,
I like to stuff my nose in the crook of my arm and smell it.
Is this the smell of vitamin D?
It smells of sun and salt and blood and earth and water,
nothing short of fire.
It is what life is made of.
If i screw my face as close to the paper as I possibly can,
I can focus on the scribbles in front of me so hard I am lost in them,
and noises become singled out, first one, then the other,
my ear so close to the sound all I feel is the rhythm,
and the rhythm in my hand––
focus on the drawing so hard I am thinking of nothing,
not even the drawing, so that it is a mediation––
only the rhythm of sound and the rhythm of my hand.
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