Turtle Diary

35 William G

When I felt the wind on my face and saw that the tide was in it seemed all at once that I didn’t need any answers to anything. The tide and the moon, the beacon on the headland and the wind were so here, so this, so now that nothing else was required. I felt free of myself, unlumbered. Where the moon ended and I began and which was which was of no consequence. Everything was what it was and the awareness of it was part of it.

The crates came out of the van and on to the trolley easily, went up the incline smoothly, there was no separation between crate and trolley and me and motion. It happened, turtles happened into the ocean, champagne happened in the moonlight.

On the way back to the big car-park we stopped at the public lavatory. Adamant, said the urinal. There was a device like the Order of the Garter but with a lion on top. Something that looked like an owl’s face in the middle. Here, now. Coming out I listened to the stream that runs through the village, heard an owl quavering in the dark. Not adamant, nothing adamant.

We pulled into the car-park, I switched off the engine. We got into the back of the van with the eiderdown and the blankets and the pillows. We lay down with our clothes on, side by side with a little space between us. First we lay on our backs then we rolled over on our sides. The space rolled over with us, stayed quietly between us all night, shaped of the front of me and the back of her.