Just Breathe

By Bill Yanger

The back fender clangs staccato as the salty beach cruiser bounces off the pavement and onto the sandy path that leads to my church. A seagrape leaf, red veined, round and waxy, hangs just close enough to slap my shoulder and two plump breasted dove take to startled flight, wings whistling in reproach of the sudden intrusion and harmonizing with the melodic hum of a late day sea breeze through the brittle limbs and needles of Australian pines tilting, always, to the lee.

Scattered orphan pine needles provide traction over the shifty sand as the path bends first to the left around a scarred and sagging sable palm and then back to the right toward my sanctuary. I jump off just as the tires bog. I lay the bike behind a dune sprouting tufts of sea-oat grasses and look out over the brigades of kindred dunes marching in either direction while morning glories pop with purple panache along their jade-green railroad vines snaking between.

I squint at the path funneling out onto a blinding whiteness, like a giant sugar bowl has tipped and spilled its contents in front of me, broken only by a cresting high tide depositing a ragged line of Sargasso clumps and sea cockles before disappearing into an emerald infinity called the Gulf of Mexico. The air sniffs briny and young, as if newly conceived, then freed to flutter and soar.