I looked once, moving from my bed at the Surf Motel where I was drinking my coffee to the large windows facing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Looked once, seeing lines through a blur of mist on the windows. A glance, in which the breakwater, where we’ll walk later, angled out into the water, the sea met the shore in a neat triangle, our little balcony, where we’ll sit later with a glass of Steller’s Jay Brut, just because, curved lines with a perpendicular line to the right.
All night I heard the waves in my sleep. When I woke several times, wondering where I was, I had to think for a moment. Window there, table, the big windows, a few of the blinds pulled down. This is a stretch of ocean I knew well as a child, and then later, as a young woman. Who was the old woman walking along the path earlier, her cane keeping her steady?
Sometimes you hear a voice through
the door calling you, as fish out of
water hear the waves, or a hunting
falcon hears the drum’s come back.
–Rumi, in Coleman Barks’ translation
