Dear Seal Friend:

I thought you were a piece of driftwood, that is, until you moved. Writhed is a better word for it. You sensed me, got up as harbor seals can only get up, and tried to make it back to the ocean. Then you stopped but stayed up. I backed off, spooked, startled. Then you turned toward me and I saw your old, tired face: gray muzzle, gray eyes, wilting white whiskers. Our eyes met and we both knew it was your time, you had come ashore to die on land, even though you really are a creature of the ocean. You have always been a unique friend to me, bringing me delight every time I saw you in the ocean, often paralleling me down the beach, an unexpected delight from a better world, when I was sometimes in dire need of delight.

How does one thank seals?

After you perish, the crows and gulls will feast upon your body and leave a carcass that will wash away with the next incoming tide. Your carcass will decompose, nourish the deep, and eventually fall to earth as rain.

It is precisely the way I hope to die, but perhaps not the carcass part.

I nodded goodbye to you, and kept walking to a fort, carrying two spoiled pies that I would leave for the birds and do my part in this recycling of life. I reached the fort and sat upon a driftlog and watched you. I saw your body go flat against the sand and the surf edge closer and closer. I began to cry and write about you.

Matt