A Hundred and Ninety-Five Steps

A Hundred and Ninety-Five Steps

Early this morning
I go down the steep stairway to the sea.

The air is fresh and clear,
fragrant with the scent of pine and alfalfa, jasmine, wild flowers, and licorice weed
growing on the hillside.
Thirty-five steps down from the top
the highway disappears from view, and I no longer hear the cars -
but hear instead the chirping of birds, and the flutter of their wings
as they flit from branch to branch in the pine tree overhead,
and the swish of the surf far below.
A few more steps - fifteen or so -
and an elegant Siamese cat squeezes under a gate in the fence by the stairs,
meows with a purr in her voice, and rubs her head on my ankles
as she makes her way to a sunny spot in the weeds on the hill.
Halfway down, in the shade, the air smells damp and musty from last night’s dew.
A cricket chirps
The ocean’s breaking waves are louder
and the scent of salt is in the air.

At last I reach the sand, and then
the jagged mound of rock on which I sit.
No one else is on the beach.

A smooth and shining dark green swell of water
moves steadily and purposefully toward shore,
meets a wall of rocks, and explodes into great clouds -
columns of snowy white foam, curving and swaying like dancers
against the rich blue backdrop of the sky -
then falling onto the dark brown rocks,
becoming tiny waterfalls, cascading down at last to rest
atop the shining pale green water that gently flows in
to caress the golden sand.

Too long, too long have I been gone!
So long has my spirit needed
to sit by the vast and mighty ocean,
to sit alone, and just to be -
drinking deeply of the salty dampness
and filling all the thirsty crevices within -
to hear and feel the rhythm of the tide,
the gently rounded roar that reassures and comforts
with its undertones of power -
and to hear,
above the roar, and the splash of breaking waves upon the rocks,
the calls of small birds overhead, and cries of soaring gulls.
My spirit - yea, my very soul, is soothed and calmed -
as if by being held in strong and gentle arms,
tenderly rocked to the rhythm of a mysterious, ageless lullaby
that permeates all my senses.
For a time, there is no time -
yet I am a part of all the time that has ever been -
and there is peace.

* * * * * * *

The sun is climbing higher in the sky; people are beginning to come.
It is time to go.
But I will remember -
there are only a hundred and ninety-five steps
back to the sea.