Ocean rise, ocean fall

 I could watch the Pacific ocean for hours…and when the sun sets, no matter the temperature, the wind and the elements, I deeply feel its beauty. 

“Look here!”, the ocean seems to say. Crashing, falling. Sweeping up, a perfect tube formed, crashing down again. My son runs out to meet the water, the skies are orange and purple and he screams with delight.  

 
“Look ocean, see here!” My son waves his arms in a flurry of excitement. The sun goes down behind the Coronado cliff, casting the last yellow beams of light onto the shore.   There is so much to see and do in this world. To taste. To love. To live. The desire to see and do can also be our demise, a pathway to suffering, when we must experience more and more to feel alive. 

Children keep it simple. The best toys are found right here: sand, ocean, shells, and sand dollars. Even the dead pelican who met an untimely death is a unique object of  interest. 

The poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver has been oft too many times repeated but I find myself thinking of it as I feel the ocean run through me.

“You do not have to be good.”

The wave falls. 

“You do not have up walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.”

Tears spring to my eyes as I remember. Of a baby not to be held in my arms. Mother in the heavens.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

Love what it loves.”

Waves rise.

“Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

 Of friendships gone. Of friendships here. 

“Meanwhile the world goes on.”

 “Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

Are moving across the landscapes…”

  
“…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,”

“calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

  
May in your day find opportunity to ride the waves of life and feel the still places between…

Namaste