Hunter's Beach

I picked my way nearer along the shocking rock shelf,
hoping the spray would rise up to meet me, myself.

Seagulls roared louder and closer than anything planned;
I looked out to see and forgot I could still see the land.

Lost in a foaming green crawl, I grew smaller than me;
shrunk in a tidepool, I heaved, and I wondered. The sea

grew like monuments for me. Each wave and its coloring shadow,
bereft, wild and laden with wrack, spoke for me and had no

need of my words anymore. I was open and glad
at last, grateful like seaweed and glad, since I had

no place on the rocks but a voice, and the voice was the sea’s:
not my own. Just the sea’s.


Edge, Atlantic, July, by Annie Finch


Maybe I had only come to this beach at high tide. Or perhaps it was because the last few times I've been here it was with a group of kids during summer camp. In any case, I never realized that if one went over to the far north side of the beach there was a giant cleft in the rocks shielding another small inlet of cobblestones. Standing in there, with the granite walls towering above me, it was easy to imagine the crushing force of the ocean grinding me into a pulp like some huge mortar and pestle. 

I wouldn't say it was a bad feeling, though. Curiously enough, I was reminded of Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining why he doesn't feel small in the universe.