Popham Beach, Maine, June 8, 2017: an hour’s drive, lunch en route at Sebasco. The beach is large, clean, not crowded. A couple of small children chase seagulls. I walk barefoot in fine, warm sand, step into the edge of the Atlantic, very cold, but I want to stand, however briefly, in that ocean which is a living being, more than scenic, more than useful. As I step in on the Maine coast, someone on the edge of France, maybe Poitou where some of my ancestors left hundreds of years ago, and someone in Australia and someone else on the Shetland Islands does the same dance step.

This day is for the senses, the sounds of surf and a gull’s cry, the fresh green of summer trees on the near islands, the scent of salt air, the warm sand and cold water, and then raspberry sorbet from Dot’s Ice Cream in Bath on the way home. A day of being, not creating. May be June 8th will become a day of remembrance–Popham Day–to commemorate life and freedom instead of war, a reprieve from chaos and inhumane idiocy.