Birthday Perfection

It was a perfect birthday. A little time at the ocean and Sue’s gift of a new book of poetry, Ted Kooser’s New and Selected Poems, entitled, wonderfully, Kindest Regards. Kindness beams from his words and images. In one poem he can talk about wild turkeys, elegant gatherings, and a benevolent truck-driving God, patiently amused, resting an elbow on the sill of his truck-full of manure.  

So it was a day of quiet sand-blown walks, reading to each other, a fat and quivery slice of coconut cream pie from The Blue Whale Restaurant, and then a drive uphill, out of the brume into bucolic countryside and a musical stream with a crop of fresh-water snails (Extra). As terrible as things are in the world, there are pockets of contentment where life is prolific, where sun and shade are a benediction, where it seems we are all bidden to go forth and rejoice before returning to our day-job, transforming suffering into possibility.