I woke before an alarm, like a shorebird stepping in before the wave. That’s more natural: a piper is never caught by the curl. Those winged fingers flit him skyward if the crash and roil of the sea comes too close. He lives on the waters: not in them. He eats what the sea has offered, running along the margin, and the sea always brings enough, if a little, if a lot; always enough for a meal, or the winged fingers reach upward and away.

Because my mind returned to awareness before human clangor could shake me back to light… light came to me, my eyes opened, the house was still, the cats were sleeping over here, over there. Behind the curtain, a bright box of sunlight after days of cloud. I danced toward the wave and away from it. I rolled out my mat and, in the overture of the surya namaskar, bowed three times to the Sun that waits for me, as the Earth slowly offers my life to that fire’s pyre. That happens every day. There is comfort in being small part of the large dance, and devotion to a practice which lights the body and the spirit from within is saying: I will sing.

Sometimes I wish I were winged. Then the wave would never reach me: or, it would catch me only once. Then life would be lived on a river of wind. Maybe a melody would accompany, like a piper or a tern, whose body is a flute and bones are light as air.

Other times I am content to be built of muscle and stone, enjoying the tumble and spin as the tide takes me in; the clean salt wash that clears me of sin, human as I am; and the strength to stand on the sand again, to walk out wet and remade like a child from a womb – a child from a womb with the earned wisdoms of a man – eager to gather the small sustenance of the strand, before the Great Hand clears the table once, and again.

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