Friday, April 3, 2015

EAGLES, TULIPS and BEACH MEMORIES


Eagles
The chicks were just fed.  There are two but one dominates,
and is often on top of the other one. 
One of the parents hunts while the other tends the nest
They trade off many times a day,
Amazing creatures
 Look at the spread these carnivores have provided: meat
(can't identify the small mammal), fish (seems to be favored) and fowl.
https://youtu.be/YCkWGbEUr-o


Tulips
These were hanging on my door Friday
From my upstairs neighbors, two young women I sometimes refer to as 'elephant footed' or 'the thudersons'.  We had a talk after a really alarmingly noisy, large object dropping, sort of day and night.  They were apologetic.  One is working in the health care policy field, and the other is a college student and part time Nanny.
The note that accompanied their gift
Sunday I hand delivered this little drawing
with two perfect organic apples.

Beach Memories
Monday's writing group session prompt
Six quick sketches


1. Amagansett, Long Island - Sneaking out to the ocean with a hurricane coming on because we needed to see it, me and my cousin Paul lost my inner tube to the waves. Then we invaded the abandoned lighthouse and found a box of a Labrador puppies no more than a five weeks old in a high box down in the basement that always flooded.  We ran back to the little cottage rental and got help rescuing them.  My cousins kept one and though I wanted one, we found homes for the remaining three instead.
*

2. Hampton Bays, Long Island - Dusk. Me and Paul holding hands walking home together talking about a horror movie seen at the drive in where somebody suddenly goes crazy and becomes a murderer…chattering about how we would never kill one another even if we went crazy, but how could we be sure, how would we remember not to hurt one another…if we snapped like that?  Chattering on and on, promising, reassuring each other, but slowly drifting further and further apart as we descended the long hill to another Summer rental place, grateful for the presence of grownups.
 *


3. Jones Beach, Long Island - Swimming just outside the first sand bar I felt a slippery thing brush my leg, then saw a fin.  SHARK!   Swimming blindly wild toward shore till out of breath I emerged on the beach.  Some lazy fisherman had left a baited float and attracted sand sharks to the safe area.  The beach closed for a week. The weather turned cold.
*



4. Somewhere in Connecticut  - A lake house rental.  Just the memory of stones, smooth stones under my feet, and velvety water lapping against my ankles.
 *



5. Fire Island, New York  - Alone. Falling asleep between high sand dunes in the late afternoon of a September day, and waking at dusk to hundreds of Monarch butterflies perched all around, some on my body.  The surprise of that, the feeling of their wings, breathing in their pale scent…the faint sound of their fluttering.  I couldn't move.  Suddenly they flew off--first one, then many, then all.  Wind rising.  Waves crashing. The distant calls of sea birds.
*


6. St. Maartin in the Virgin islands  - A week vacation with Mother, how the horizon disappeared one moonless night of a billion stars as we stood watching from the boardwalk.  The starry sky mirrored exactly in the dark water merged with it.  It was as if we were floating in infinite space.  I became viscerally aware that gravity was all that held us to the earth--felt it.


~*~

3 comments:

Mo Crow said...

ah the beach!

grace Forrest~Maestas said...

that last photograph yes. the rare
moments, seconds, really when
there is that visceral sense of

gravity, yes. this photograph
speaks of it

Velma Bolyard said...

miracles and memories. how amazing this world really is.