Another gift from my early spring wanderings
this familiar peek behind the fishing shacks
in Menemsha was brought into a different kind of focus
which only a winter of island weather could provide.
I’ve taken hundreds of photos from this vantage point
over the decades but in the three growing seasons of the year
that bank across the water is a wall of green vines and scrub oak
which all but obscures the old wooden stairways
and hides most of the foundations and some of the porches.
On this day in late March
there was the barest hint of warming sap beginning to run
into the tips of the shrubbery and the capillaries of the tree branches
a glowing harbinger of the promises of spring.
I wrote in the Coast Guards notes of the peaceful solitude
that accompanied me on the walk around the harbor that day
I was able to stand in this scalloped niche
for an extended time of totally uninterrupted observation
watching and listening to the light play with the reflections
and the water lapping the mossy pilings
the breeze whispering through the rigging
and the ropes slackening
then pulling taught
over and over and over again
in a rhythm as old as the sea itself.
