Most days I walk the old track under the pines and over the dunes to the beach. I have chosen for you the bend in the path where a thicket of beach plum survives the backhoes, where at noon in our season the air used to be heavy with the smell of blossoms. This morning I walked on the brown needles as gently as I could so that no abrupt gesture would temper the music of the warblers in the spruce. Returning, I broke off a branch of beach plum and carried it home. Now it rises from the blue vase on the mantel, the flowers, fragile and pink, beginning to wither, one broken twig oozing a clear drop. Yes, that is where I should like to meet you, halfway between home and the shore, knowing that back there are kitchen and books and bedroom, a house full of lives and living, and, not far ahead, the comforting sea.
