Places sing calling songs. Just now, they might be missing their people. We might learn that by allowing ourselves to miss them… In our bone-deep missing, and in our willingness to remember ourselves as worthy of being missed, we could begin to hear [their] songs.
Adam Wilson
I can hear the ocean call to me. Its sound obliterates the noisy thoughts within my head. I breathe easier and relax as waves pull or push the waters away or toward the shore where I sit. Clouds drift above me. The sun is warm. The breeze feels cool. Sometimes the song’s volume and tempo increase as waves angrily crash against the shore and dark clouds approach, and I am forced to seek shelter. The ocean has its moods, and so do I.
I don’t live at the beach, so I cannot physically hear its song every day, and yet it still calls to me. I carry the unique, familiar rhythm deep within me. When I close my eyes and breathe slowly I can hear the ocean singing its song of gather and release. It is like putting a seashell to my ear, a childhood wonder.
Each time I return I feel as if the ocean has been patiently waiting for me. Instinctively, I slip back into the timing of its refrain, lost in the sound of one wave replacing another, like chords in a song. My thoughts are suspended. There is only this moment. All the other moments, past and future, happy and sad, have been tumbled over and over by salty waves until they are so small I no longer notice them. I walk along the beach, picking up little treasures the sea has left behind and put them in my pocket.
~Lisa Kiel
