Givin’ the New Year’s Finger in the Sand

On New Year’s Day I hunted for beaverwood at the wrack line. A couple choice cuts here and there and I stuffed my pockets and shouldered the bigger pieces. It was early morning and a white ocean creamed in at low tide. I was thinking about someone dear lost to me.

A design in the sand arrested my attention. I headed toward it. In short order, I beheld a drawing of a hand giving The Finger, but also with a dash of smirky smile at the bottom of the design. What a New Year’s Day find!

In my previous life as a teacher, a photograph of this drawing would have prompted an immediate lesson in creative writing or philosophy for my students.

I leave it up to you and invite your interpretations. Is the Finger Giver angry? Breaking through, finally done with it all, and transcending? Giving it to someone in particular or the world in general?

Man or woman or something else? Saying a hearty goodbye to 2019?

It is instructive that the Finger was pointed toward land, but I imagine a few people might give the Finger to the ocean because the ocean took the lives of a loved one. That’s not the ocean’s fault. That’s a misplaced Finger in my mind.

Someone was on the beach well before me, at dawn, maybe in the dark, maybe at the stroke of midnight, maybe elated, maybe on meth, maybe sober, maybe distressed beyond belief, and etched this Finger in the sand. I can only hope the etching somehow helped.