Nonetheless                                                                                       

On the deck. Shorts, t-shirt, no underwear. Gin with a splash of tonic. That ring of silence spliced by occasional birdsong. My book, the one I’ve been waiting all spring to tackle, lies on my lap. The great swath of ocean before me is spliced in half by the top rail.

I place the book down, position the gin to reach it blind, and resume a dead stare out into the wonder of this world. Not a breath of wind. Tomorrow is another day, with six more to follow. Barely long enough to reprogram the reflexive fifteen-minute email check.

My friend, retired now after doing hard time, delivers chips and dip and returns to puttering. I don’t like onions in my guacamole, but it’s her cottage. This aerie overlooking the bay. We’ll have fun, she said. And we have all the ingredients, I know, onions notwithstanding. I exercise restraint on the gin and turn up the corners of my mouth. Generous invitation, beautiful place, and the friend - one of my very favourites. I celebrate with a sip considerably larger than the last and breathe expansively. No value in asphyxiating on one crummy week of holidays.

All I want to do is nothing.

Until flashes of yellow pull me into the trees. Finches, a dozen at least, shooting over the roof and darting from limb to limb, taking me a thousand miles from my in-basket. Where did they come from? These birds that never so much as set foot in the city.

“Daphy, come see!”  

A streak slices through my line of vision and hits the glass. Bang. Thump onto the wooden deck. A stop motion of feathers and confusion as the bird lifts. An inch, then almost three but it’s head catches in the decking. A brave flicker, and it’s out. Like a light, I suppose. I don’t dare move.

Rest, little birdy.

“Those glass panels…” My arm shoots out to stop Daphne in her tracks but I’m stopped by the look on her face.

“A moment of silence at the very least. Please.” I say.

“I’ll get a plastic bag.”  

I pull myself from the Adirondack’s embrace for a closer look, a picture for the holiday album. The beauty is wedged tidily between slats of the deck, tiny claws curled in a percussive terror, ants and insects already feeding. I know this creature.

I share the photo with my twenty-year-old son. A bit sentimental, his text in reply, but a very yellow bird, nonetheless.  

The dinghy must be flipped and hauled off the dock into the drink. Daphne is blessedly stronger than me. It’s also good she likes to row. With the upper body strength of a sparrow, I’m naturally suited to the prow. It’s only ten minutes across if the winds are with you and she knows how much I love beach combing. Especially after a wee toot. And today, we have nothing but time. I retrieve her flipflop from the murky bottom as we pull the boat ashore.

“Beach glass,” I announce, but it’s old bones, old picked clean bleached white bones that I’m looking for, and though I’m not sure why myself, I’m certain she wouldn’t understand. We’re lost to the hunt immediately, she to smooth stones and driftwood, me to my glass (and bones if I can find them), heads to the ground, big toes overturning every promise.

“What do you make of this?” Her legs are braced as she wrenches a treasure lodged in the sand and lands with a thud on her generous bottom. I raise my sunglasses for a better look. The thing is neither fish nor fowl though definitely has the makings of something.

“Begonias?”

My thought exactly.

I wander under the trees looking for rope, anything to help us get a better grip on the nascent planter without destroying our hands on the barnacles, and happen upon an abandoned fire pit, charred rib bones of what appears to be deer strewn amongst blackened logs and ash. Above, hanging from the branches of the Douglas fir, is the rest, each bone of the animal tied to a rope and suspended in the air like a infant’s mobile.  A desecration too high to dismantle.

“Did you find anything?” Daphy has taken off her hat and shirt and lies propped on her elbows. She’s lit another joint.

“No. Not a thing.” I join her bare-breasted on the sand. I want to feel the burn of the sun’s rays.

We descend at 4 o’clock. Down the rocky hillside to the water. Slathered in sunscreen. Sun hats, towels, gin-filled coolers, and Saturday’s crossword. We can’t get our shins under the shade of the umbrella and they fry again in the sun.

“Mayo has two “n’s”. It won’t fit.”

“Even the American version?”

“Miracle Whip?” She’s warming up for Scrabble tonight - which will be far less congenial.

The tide is high, the water warmed by the sunbaked rocks of the landwash. We pick our way over the ragged bank, two hot coals ready to be doused and really needing to go. Always first in, I stand waist deep, legs dissolving into the heat streaming between them, then take the plunge. If I were an element, I would be water; Daph, unquestionably earth - an observation I opt not share. She heads back up after finishing her business and I make my way out and toward the point.  I roll onto my back, eyes closed, arms outstretched, my body held aloft in the salt, hair drifting into Neptune’s crown. The only sound is my breath and my body gives with each ripple and heartbeat of ocean. It’s just me in this endless watery oneness. Just me. A very yellow bird, nonetheless.