The fog began to roll in yesterday afternoon just after lunch. There is nothing quite like fog at low tide on a beach like this. One memorable day last year, I was running back from Fort Macon on this beach and it was so thick that I lost sight of the sand dunes and the buildings behind them. But I knew approximately how far I had run, so I stopped and made my way up to the dunes blindly, eventually finding the path to the walkway and the condo, still invisible in the fog.
Martha had started walking while I was finishing up some work on my computer (my silent computer!), and then I went down to meet her on the beach. These fishermen looked like they were settled in for the rest of the afternoon.
Figures appeared only faintly in the distance. It was a ghostly and beautiful experience, the calm surf lapping quietly up onto the sand, everything fading into the mist. Up ahead I thought I saw Martha but could not be sure until she got closer.
What did she have cradled in her hand? She was beaming. Another sand dollar? No, something far more unusual: a royal sea star (Astropecten articulatus), which had just washed in, a bright light in the fog.
It is the unexpected that I like the most,
Like the royal sea star we found,
Phoenician purple, like a Christmas cookie
Squeezed from a piping
bag.
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