On this cool, mid-April evening,
I lean against a lifeguard’s boat
boldly painted red and white,
half-buried in a sea of sand.
Beyond the murmur of the waves,
and further into the half-moon bay,
I make out freighters waiting patiently,
pregnant with their foreign wares.
The sun hangs orange-lit above
the dark horizon’s edge. Flimsy clouds
seem as though they have been burned
and now glow a fiery red.
Seagulls, mere blackened specks
in a glowing sky, announce
in plaintive cries impending
darkness and night.
Near the water’s edge, a dog’s
silhouette barks for a simple joy,
before it darts towards a badly tossed
piece of drifted wood.
Along the promenade, hand-locked
couples pass each other, while others,
on their evening jogs, move like
jaguars streaking by.
I turn my sight behind the bay and,
like a polished jewel, the city sparkles;
half-lit buildings stand proud, as though
they guard a secret paradise.
Peace prevails, and tranquility competes
only with the mildly breaking waves
as I breathe in the sights and sounds
of the closing of this day.
Here, both splendor and meaning,
intersect, merging into the new, a state
beyond both, one in which the experience
is the meaning and the truth.
