littoral
amphibious
riparian
Chincoteague

I want ocean mist, to ride my bike into ocean mist on the wildlife loop. Because it is morning. I am still a couple of decades from my seventies.I ride alone into this not-water not-air which coats my bare arms. I come from a small rented space where it is just me, the owners’ old furniture, and my writing. When I walk and when I cook and when I bike onto the wildlife loop and when I am falling asleep in the lumpy old bed with the rough bleach-scented sheets, I think about my writing or about some quarrel back home.

On a pine spar, I see what I imagine is a sea hawk, an osprey, but when the weighty-bodied bird with its long head takes flight, by some alchemy, perhaps by silhouette, I realize I am seeing a bald eagle. Don’t know if I actually see or am merely guessing the white head. The bird’s fleet heaviness, its solemnity, the small head and the business-like body: an eagle.

Beside where my bike tires flick over the trail, a young rabbits freezes gelatinous eyes upon my rolling enormity.

I pass the two geese and their young; the gander hisses and holds his threatening, reptile head to the ground beside my tire. When I have seen them feeding in wetland grasses, the geese could be dinosaurs with rounded bodies, long undulating necks and little heads. They are officious community members and vigilant parents, fanatically guarding the fluff ball goslings. They hiss, venomosly.

I ride a trail at the shifting edge between wetland and sand, close to the wavering line between ocean water and land. In the distance, the line between sky and water. And beyond, the things I may never know.