Beautiful Incongruities

Just past dawn. Super low tide. I’m moving down the beach in meandering fashion, picking up limpets of all kinds, and hairy tritons, too. I love the heart-shaped look of the latter, the two chambers, both ready for love.

An osprey flies overhead. It’s carrying a crab in its talons. I’ve never seen that before. That makes osprey sightings in two straight days.

I reach the end of the beach and face a cliff of rock 200 feet high. I look up and see two Canadian geese standing atop the cliff. They start honking. I’ve never seen geese on a cliff before.

I look down and to my left and see a single orange sea star stuck to a rock.

Geese above. Sea star below. Geese. Sea star. I’ve never seen that combination before.

What beautiful incongruity!

Worthy of a poem.

Worthy of a painting.

Worthy of a song.

Worthy of a ten minute film.

Or an essay about the beautiful incongruities in my life,

and I certainly have them.

I take a photograph. It utterly fails to convey the beauty although if you look hard, you will see the geese in the upper right and the sea star in the lower left.

I’ll leave it at that.