Southampton Beach Redux
Summer 1970. 51 years ago.
Recently jettisoned from an agonizing four-year sentence of boarding school, the joyous pardon and release from purgatory birthed a spate of graduation debauchery. Then a summer of painting houses followed to gather cash, readying myself for college in the fall.
Southampton Beach was a getaway place to first recover from the revelry and then escape on weekends after work without worry. A friend knew about the oceanside sanctuary and told me about it, but shared the information as if it were a profound secret.
You could sleep out on the least accessible public beach there then, and no one would hassle you if you were quiet. We were careful to create no disturbances and sought out Southampton that summer, because we could. It was a reasonably obscure and somewhat distant location, so the beach that summer was not crowded at all. We knew we were fortunate and did not disclose our whereabouts much.
Southampton Beach spawned a poem, which I penned originally in 1978. I sought to capture the mystical feeling of that miraculous hideaway at the end of Long Island; the ineffable on paper, to the extent that is even possible. Revisiting this piece now surprises me, in that it’s clear to me now that I had a glimpse of something then that kept me intrigued for a lifetime.
20 years ago I wrote a note to myself that I should gather together my archive of written meanderings soon and see what they still may mean. 20 years ago, I said, “The day will come when the written pieces will be very important to me.”
Okay to that, finally. Game on.
That memory from 1970 captured in poesy reinforces for me now what I spent the last 50 years learning well: that the day-to-day routines will fade away soon quite effortlessly, eclipsed by the light of a luminescent, transcendent moment. Beyond all the mundane tomfoolery, there is awakening.
Awakening after a forty-year business career. Awakening by surfacing journals and poetry and stories created on a typewriter. Energized by unearthing stacks of varied writings accumulated inside and outside of a work life. Intrigued by reviewing piles of letters to and letters from.
So, now five years happily graduated from career striving, it still feels a bit like the “Revenge of the English Major” each time I revisit a piece like this that still makes sense to me.
Southampton Beach — Long Island, New York — Summer 1970
Awakened by caressing rain, soft on my face,
I look with pleasant surprise at where I am.
The sand has disturbed the smooth, hot wool.
Water slides between my sweating toes, and
My feet are cooled.
Pulling sleep-filled stiff legs up to meet chin,
I stand with a push, upright to meet pre-dawn’s darkness.
The unzipped bed awaits the heat of summer sun
To dry the rain, yet it waits as I.
My hard legs need a walk to awaken them,
So I set out on the jetty,
Where gulls roused too early like me watch
The sea, dark purple, regal salted water.
Up through my toes comes the clean dark sand,
Only hours before too hot to tread,
Yet on this morning so cooling, refreshing,
In the distance looms the great rock hedge,
Setting out into the murky bay from the shore.
Whose strength divides the water?
What man’s sinews strain to protect the beach?
Upon his work I walk,
Hurting bare feet laughing,
Out to the apex I wander, rejoicing in the work,
Of my comrade, the builder.
My walk for the moment is finished.
Motionless I stand watching the battering surf
And legs, feet, knees, groin are soaked,
My skin held tight against by body,
My eyes wide-open expecting dawn.
The thrill of anticipation is like
A feather on my scalp
And the wet matted hair smells like the earth.
The sudden warmth turns my head east,
I see the day born out of a womb of blue water.
Welling up in my chest comes the tear of joy
At greeting my dawn.
Speechless I scream, light bathing the shore,
A sun bathes my body, and I bathe it with
Deep heartfelt rays of my spirit,
Touching the light it comes into me, through me,
Filling me,
Gladly I get to know my dawn,
And me.
By chance I turn my back to the dawn,
And discover a spectrum painted on the sky,
Opposite the sun in the mist of the night’s rain,
Are the vivid painter’s dreams.
I stand alone and in the company of all men.
My sun is your sun.
My colors are yours.
Unaware of a distance covered,
I find myself at the campsite, shaking the sand from my bed.
The infant morning sun has dried it.
Shedding my clothes, I run to the shore.
Black sand is again white,
Legs straining to sprint
There comes the harsh chattering in my ear
Of black and white flashes,
The quick,
Soaring sandpiper dives to protect her brood.
Frightened, laughing, I leap
The sand cradle,
Not disturbing her chicks.
Sweat down my back cuts through the dirt
I’d rather not clean away.
A clear, foamy sea grasps me.
Embracing her, I plunge into the waves
And become it.
Riding the crest of her torrent,
My body from the waist up in open air,
She flings me to the beach,
Hitting the sand
That knocks the air from my chest.
Shaken,
I stand,
And run with a wild,
Lovely vengeance,
Into the water,
Again.
