Pinpoints of Light

On a solitary writing retreat far from home: It's shocking what little I know about all things ocean or bay, born and reared, as I was, in the middle of Kansas. I had few childhood experiences of watching or noticing the natural phenomena of large bodies of water. When a child sees new things she accepts them as they are, each one another thing to learn about the world of new things to learn---one more memory to add to her growing cache. To attend the same phenomena as an adult, without the backdrop of childhood exposure, is to be visited with an edge of exhilaration that may not have happened in childhood. With gratitude for this, I sit on "the dock of the bay" and pay close attention.

This morning the water of the bay, just two feet deep, and crystal clear under the fishing dock where I sit, ripples and laps around the dock and against the rocks, bending the sun's rays, causing them to show up on the sandy bottom as an undulating net of lines and strings. The effect is to make the bottom appear covered with large flat rocks edged with thin bright-orange rings of light. Where the strings intersect, an intense sparkle reflects back up through the water, each one a spot of hot white light among a million such spots, burning into my aging memory cache. I hope these spots translate into writing inspiration later today. dkm