A PRAIRIE OF SPARTINA GRASS

A gray-haired woman sails a cat boat from the marina at West Neck Road out towards Sebonic Creek. Under her white crush hat, she wears earrings even now. She looks farther to the north, to the shore of Cow Neck, sees herself, a young woman, slim in blue jeans, earrings appear under billowing brown hair; she bends and rises, bends and rises collecting dried sea lavender. From the sand spit looking east across Sebonac Creek out toward a prairie of spartina grass, the water is oh so blue and the grass turquoise, the light in the west fades over darker waters. An osprey hovers just this side of sight, killies crowd in the tidal rush out to Gt. Peconic Bay. The gray-haired woman feels as if time has folded over, like photographs are folded when pictures of the same person from different times are placed side by side. She watches her younger self and waves knowing the young woman will not respond, aware that the young never think of what they will be like when older. She tacks off to the west thinking, “I like what I saw, I wonder if she’d like what she’d have seen, had she looked?”