“I know that our bodies where created to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. There is not a fragment in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.”
John Muir. From: ‘A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf’. 1916

PART 1 – COASTAL PROMONTORY
.
Twilight lastly wanes.
Darkness, like a window
Shade, slowly descends
upon the surroundings…
.
Within moments a pall
of mist has coalesced; a
moist residue feathering
‘round about…
.
Almost imperceptibly;
the sounds of Gulls and
Sandpipers drift into the distance…
.
Mingled with a shifting of
ocean breezes, goosebumps move
like tiny wheels, in waves of trembling,
up and down the spine…
.
Squinting eyes observe
a diaphanous mist forming halos
‘round the shifting coruscation of
distant streetlights…
.
Steady, in the northernmost parts,
the moon rises from behind a transom
of steep ridges onto a glistening inlet…
.
With slivers of serpentine
Incandescence; moonlight hastens
upon the footpath in a wash of
pallid vividness…
.
We watch, in cooling night air,
as the lesser light frolics on the
Ocean’s surface in ashen flames…
.
From the imbiber’s pantheon,
across the boulevard, laughter’s cacophony
echoes fitfully across sand and water…
.
Slowly, the nomadic path of
nighttime envelopes both of us in a
cloak of darkened cerulean hues…
.
PART 2 – LAGUNA MEADOWS
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Setting sun extends
fingers across the vast meadows…
.
Broadening shadows blanket
drought-parched grasses
in a dimming shroud…
.
Balanced in thirds
and sevenths, twilight’s
Heart tones sketch the day’s
memories in pallid brushstrokes…
.
Scrub-jay, Quail, Raven, Sparrow, Chickadee,
and Mud-hen sing exuberantly, across the lake,
in a chorus of salient transition…
.
These nocturnal cantatas
wrap the soul in a chorus of
elevated harmony…
.
Remembering sunlight’s warmth;
soaring affections succumb to
the panoptic chill of eventide…
.
With the threshold crossed,
two spirits spread their wings
and take flight into the radiance
of an unsullied moon…
.
PART 3 – ACTIVITY ABOARD THE BARQUE - SUNSET
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Across far-flung horizons -
below the suns apex - hues
of late afternoon commingle with
the easily swayed aspects of moments…
.
Burdened from rising pressures,
surface water furrows like wrinkled
old fruit, as storm-clouds form west
along the Northern Shorelines…
.
Aboard the wooden Barque:
passenger’s rollick on the leeward deck
where beamish stewards serve snacks, and
budding libertines eyeball possibilities…
.
The measured clicking of heels echo
near the fo’c’sle where eager faces float socially;
and where, in shifting breezes, the long flaxen
hair of youth hover’s naturally…
.
A resonance of laughter widens
‘round long-stemmed flutes; amber
liquid splashing drops along rounded
glass edges smudged with lipstick and spit…
.
The eyes and ears draw all these
darting fragments (of sight and sound)
into the mind, so the adventurous soul can
paint with words in subtle or bold images…
.
Time takes us there,
where light and dark commingle,
where hope and fact ignite the flames
of understanding, and where each
breath is present and past…
.
Continually morphing, in light and shadow,
the line of night traverses the rounded surface.
Slowly, in fluid motion, the once resplendent sun
gradually dips down into another time of respite…

© richard lloyd cederberg
2016
              richardlloydcederberg.com