The Turquoise Line

Where the storm returns what it has taken

Beauty invited us to stillness. A deep breath. A loving embrace.

Countless pebbles, no two the same. A strip of turquoise so improbably bold, untouched by restraint. A fence long acquainted with the wind, grown into the embrace of its powerful dance. The scent of salty spray and the spiced warmth of sunlit dune grass. And above it all: the sky, alive with a rumbling, shaping force.

And memory comes. Unbidden. Of love.

 — -

A love the world could not hold. It had to fade without being lost.

And beauty turns to my burden. Where warmth once lived, no passage remains. The wind falls silent.

This pain has no sharp edges — no darkness, no violence at its root. It lives in what once was pure beauty. It settles into a cry of a seagull, into the caressing sweep of a coastline, the clatter of stones in the surf, into the warmth the wind still carries at dusk.

The lonesome pebbles. The desperate turquoise. The sad leaning fence.

 — -

Drops begin to fall. First the raindrops. Then fall the tears. The floodgates open, grief and pain pour out of me.

The salt of my tears once belonged to the sea. The water from the clouds I have drunk. My tears find their way back home.

How often have my tears been wept by an ancestor’s eyes?

How often have they quenched a lingering thirst?

I fall with the rain. I rise with the clouds.

 — -

And so I welcome them all — the storm, the clouds and the rain. And I join their dance with my sorrow and pain. This is my fair share to flowering and falling.

And in the weeping, the rinsing, in the letting go, the image is freed once more. An unburdened beauty emerges as the clouds move on.

 — -

The lively turquoise line at the horizon, the playfully clacking pebbles, the enchantingly unbound wind, and the vast open sky — they were always there. Always beautiful. The storm passes. The beauty remains.

And somewhere above me, floats the seagull’s song.

— –

Thank you very much for your time. If you feel like sharing a few thoughts with me, I would be as happy as a pebble in this image.

I wish you a wonderful day. 
Roland