After too many years I am home again kicking sand and walking along the bay I learned to swim in, dodge nettles in, nearly drowned in when my homemade kayak capsized. Nothing much has changed except the remnant pilings where the fishing pier stood. The gulls look the same, squawk the same as the last time I tried to talk to them. The bay, which can muster the fury of an angry sea when a tropical storm blows in, is quiet. No swells, no white caps. Even the bell on the red buoy is silent. The sky is beginning to gray. I pick up a shell flattened and smoothed to a pale blue sheen by the surf. I like the feel and fit of it in my hand.

 

 

This summer’s late afternoon I decide that Thomas Wolfe was wrong. I sit comfortably alone at water’s edge and wait for the sun to set.