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BEACH FIRES by Sue Scalf Newly divorced, the philosopher revealed he had been so eaten by despair that on a Maine beach, with night rolling in, he piled stacks of driftwood that stretched into a curve along the shore. Straight-backed, torch in hand, proud as an Olympian, he ran, bent down and ignited each one. Purpose? None, he said. But exhaustion left him somehow vindicated, somehow clean, as if each pyre was a small sun, and he was the god that made them burn, nothing more than this. It was something to do, something to say if anyone were listening, as if it mattered, as if anyone cared. Beyond the susurrus of unseen waves endless and unfeeling, smoke joined fog, voiceless in rising spirals, like censers of incense or unspoken prayer. And all along the beach, fires winked out one by one. © Sue Scalf « Home | Contributor Notes » |
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