Sunday Departure
Sunday Departure
Minivans crowd the ferry lot by noon. Wet chairs are strapped like evidence on top. The island keeps its counsel with the dune, While children dream through one last bait-shop stop.
A father shakes the sand from borrowed shoes. A mother folds the map back into squares. The radio begins its inland blues. Salt leaves the skin before the heart repairs.
By Tuesday all the shells will lose their names. The porch survives as pixels in a phone. Yet traffic cannot file what silence claims. Some roads run home and prove no place is home.
The coast asks little; that is why it stays. And ruins certain men for measured days.
I had in mind that familiar last-day scene down on the coast — coolers drained, towels half dry, kids asleep too early in the back seat, parents already turning practical again. There’s always something a little sad and a little revealing about that departure. Vacation makes people softer for a minute, then the car gets pointed inland and the old arrangements start reassembling themselves. What interested me wasn’t nostalgia. It was that quieter fact that some places expose a hunger people can manage while they’re there, but not explain once they leave.
– Doc