There’s a grey indecisiveness to the mood of the sky today, above the ocean, her anger slowly building, past my perspective, beyond the curved horizon, there’s a new storm at brew, the tickling of a rage not held by the ticking of any invention so lame as time. On the sand, near the rocks of the inlet, with my pole, not expecting any fish—they’re as nervous about the impending storm as I, and while they’ve not got the knowledge of location, timing, intensity, millennia of evolution has taught them all the same—danger lurks, tumult and terror and drama.

I got a brief nibble a few hours ago, when the sun was still young in the new autumn day, but then nothing, for an hour, two.

Days away still, so there’s no immediate threat, and I’ve cleared my schedule, set aside time for imagining, for contemplation, for fishing, for sitting on the beach enjoying the responsibility of nothing, after a season of much. It’s been a hard summer, a self-imposed harsh summer, after an emotional spring, The long sprint of ten sixty hour work weeks has left me dry, brittle, and the ocean might, I hope, provide some much needed emotional moisture through the power of her endless breadth, her inconceivable energy, most especially on a day like today, as the waves grow gradually yet surely, as the hurricane rages south of Bermuda, as the sun struggles to burn through the insistent fogginess, fails.

At the office, lists beckon, messages wait, impatiently, unanswered. Here, in the proverbial calm, preceding the storm, in the slight hints at mere premonition, by weather witch doctors with dubious PhDs, here by the inlet, gazing across an angry and curved expanse, nothing is okay, but there’s a reprieve. And that’ll have to do.

RBWG writing for Art in the AM
Inspired by a painting by Margie Spaulding