In Light, On Angel Wings

Once a year, in August,

I return to coastal Maine to visit with my sister.

She offers me the little green room on the northern side of the house

Its ceilings sloped on one side

Giving the room the feeling of a collapsed letter U

Baskets lined in a soft cotton sage are arranged like soldiers along the sides of the walls

Filled to overflowing with stuffed animals, children’s books and balled up socks

The bed tucks itself neatly between the two windows

And leaves just enough space so that I can sit upright late at night with my mug of tea, nodding off ever so slightly, the book slipping out of my hand

A big, sleepy girl, in a little boy’s small bed

In the morning, my sister’s footfall will creak on the loose floorboards outside my room

She will pause, hesitating, and then slowly swing the door open and whisper to me in her hoarse, morning voice

Time to wake up

It is dawn, or just barely

The light seeping around the sides of the Roman shades

Is dark, charcoal gray

Like the clam flats at low tide

The foghorn from Portland Head Light sounds out a low, plaintive wail –

Melancholy and bleating, like a lamb

Relieved to see that night is finally passing but surprised at the sudden disappearance of its mother’s warm, wooly flanks

By the time I make my way down to the kitchen

My sister has already prepared coffee and hot buttered toast

I pour in the cream, hypnotized by the billowy cotton balls

Like thunderclouds ominously creeping across the far edges of a hot August night

My sister points me in the direction of the door

Go, she urges,

This is your only chance to see the ocean at daybreak

Fort Gorgeous will appear on the horizon like a castle raising itself out of the depths

And the Casco Bay Islands will slowly come into focus just behind it

Arranged here and there, overlapping with peaks and valleys

As though someone had just shaken out a blanket that falls back to earth in soft, billowed mounds

The seagulls will still be lulled by the night’s silence

The boats softly rising and falling at their moorings

The ocean swells gently lapping the edges of the shore

Like a mother softly stroking the wispy hair of a newborn

If you are lucky, you will find the granite bench that perches on a rocky promontory overlooking Cousins Island

Take a moment to sit there

You will know it by its’ marker, an epitaph colored with golden lichen that remembers someone beloved, forever cradled with the words

In Light, On Angel Wings