He strode to the Pacific in only his ragged blue shorts ruffling in the wind. His shoulders could carry burdens and the recalled souls of many children, his musculature clear but his swagger mysteriously timid. It was a gait his grandmother would know, love and dearly want to protect. This private march in the tricky sand and the presence of that skin called all the gods out. As witnesses and protectors.
He hesitated in the bright formless, blue sky before his toe touched the ocean. He proceeded into that grey vastness of stories, poked about to his knee length and then paused to look back at a friend as though asking for reassurance. The wind was making his hair. His hands were delicately upraised as he gingerly stepped deeper into Father Ocean.
He knew the coldness of that body now; then holding his nose he baptized himself. The sun celebrated when he reappeared. Then he dove and swam. And all his fears were left... in that fleeting breeze.
He cleared the water, wiped his face; returned to the baked sand of the beach amidst the dormant crowd, thumbed about his breeches for a good wind there and with a newly invigorated stride accepted momentarily his affirmation as child of the sun and given of good earth. Though distant and vague to him, his possibilities were pronounced by his shoulders carving a new form of the mountains behind.
His name is Man. He is my friend.
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