On a day sunny last week, my son took me to a beach, El Pescador, near Malibu, where he occasionally fishes.

A beautiful spot, with the tide still out, allowing me to explore the rocks and tide pools and all that they house. Every new bird set off a quick heartbeat, from cormorants, to king fisher to whimbrels.

A beach where benevolent pirates decided to make it easy for you to find treasure… DIG HERE!

I was particularly taken by the range of colors, not those of the sea as in Mary Oliver’s poem, but those of the rocks, fauna and flora surrounding me.

Reds, greens, yellows, ochres, turquoise, purple, oranges, grey and blues filled the eyes if you looked closely. Lots of pictures, then, and few words – treading with light feet and a full heart in view of nature, once again.

Tides

Every day the sea

blue gray green lavender
pulls away leaving the harbor’s
dark-cobbled undercoat

slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls
walk there among old whalebones, the white
spines of fish blink from the strandy stew
as the hours tick over; and then

far out the faint, sheer
line turns, rustling over the slack,
the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over
the clam beds, slippery logs,

barnacle-studded stones, dragging
the shining sheets forward, deepening,
pushing, wreathing together
wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures

spilling over themselves, lapping
blue gray green lavender, never
resting, not ever but fashioning shore,
continent, everything.

And here you may find me
on almost any morning
walking along the shore so
light-footed so casual.

By Mary Oliver,

From A Thousand Mornings, 2012

The stone formations and differing colors never cease to amaze.

Here is a musical offering to the oceans from around the world.

It was a good day.