Early Morning, Low Tide

The sea is so calm this morning. I sit on the rocks sipping my coffee, looking out the “western way,” which lies almost due south between Cranberry Island and the Manset shore, the silence broken only by the sound of a few birds and the occasional melancholy clang of a bell buoy. Later the water will be filled with boats, both working and pleasure, but now I can see only two small sails far in the distance, one carrying its passengers away, the other coming toward home. A handful of gulls skim soundlessly above the water’s surface, landing without effort on a rock or the waveless sea. Somewhere, out of sight, a boat’s motor breaks the silence. There is just enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and it is so clear that I look far out to a horizon, which the Episcopalian burial liturgy tells us is “nothing save the limit of our sight.” Or more fully, “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing, save the limit of our sight.” I imagine what lies beyond, but am mostly immersed in my surroundings here, so absorbed that my coffee has gone cold. I think, I don’t have the words to describe this, which suits me because they would limit what is limitless. My religion taught me early on to fear God. I sit in awe of this.