There Will Never Be Another Today

Before we even had chance to catch our breath, summer 2018 came to a close. The sunshine hopped the last flight out to Rincon and we stayed behind, exhaling an ombre gray into the sand and sky.

I love winter in Rockaway: the stillness that hunkers down before the fine-toothed fierceness of mixed precipitation and the cyclonic rapture of the off-shore wind. We parse our words; we let the ocean do the talking. Out come the winter surfers, waddling into the water like lithe penguins in their neoprene booties and mittens. Down parkas enshroud those early morning souls who congregate in high-shouldered huddles while their dogs, loose-limbed and off-leash, lope across the beach, free to dig holes as deep as wheelbarrows and sniff the cracked copper bowls of picked-out horseshoe crabs strewn across the shore.

Just when we think it will never end, introverted winter yields to late spring’s sturm und drang. Lightning cuts across the sky like jagged scars. Thunder shakes its cymbals and rain soaks the sidewalks, rinsing away the gray.

And so here we are. It’s the last day of May 2019. Summer is nigh and there will never be another today. We’ve been awake all this time, but it’s like today, we finally woke up. We rise, we look around. It is light. There is color in the air. We are ready. For what? For anything. Why? Winter is at rest. The sun has come home.