He is one of the few people who sees life from thirty feet in the air. His forearms are darkened from long days at the stern, and he carries the salt-water breeze in his eyes, even when he looks away from the ocean. Waves slap the belly of his boat, but he stands unjolted, for he is not only part of the ship, but its heart.
He leans against the prow with his arms bent, fingers loosely intertwined, and with a Carleton curled between his lips. The wind teases the smoke out into the open where it gets lost among the turquoise hills and valleys.
As he looks over this cool desert from his perch, he can spot the spiny metal strip that lurks below the surface. It is the backbone of a monster who, face down, engorges itself on the blood of the earth that lies miles deep into the ocean floor. As fierce as any known by seafaring Greeks, this underwater monster, the ocean rig, would shred his boat if he ventured too close to where the thirsty metal breathes.
These waters have shown him many great and terrible things, but none truer than a reflection of himself. Indeed, when he looks into the waves, the man he sees there is noble, honest, and ever-growing with the tide. Mirrors show the man only as he is today, but the ocean...the ocean conjures both the past and the future in its dimensions and creates an outline of the soul.
He flicks the butt of the cigarette into the water, straightens, and walks away. The time has come to find his place on the shore, to quit the space where birds fly and join his feet again to the gravity that calls us all. He looks to the water and it winks at him. Of course he'll be back. His home address isn't in street names and numbers, but shifting coordinates of degrees as he chases the sun as it dips daily into his ocean.
