1
One of the happiest days
Of my adult life,
Happened because of a serendipity
On Great Island, Cape Cod.
Great Island isn't really an island.
Maybe it used to be,
But as long as I have known it
It is a peninsula that sticks
A few miles out into Cape Cod Bay.
You might say it is three islands
Joined together by sand
Just north of Wellfleet.
The further out you go
The less likely you are to see anybody.
Except maybe that's not as true
As it used to be,
Since the Cape,
Like so much of the world,
Has been slipping away
Becoming something less personal,
Something bought and sold.
The Cape is a changeling,
A sandy place of towns
And beaches
Where we used to camp and vacation
While visiting my grandmother
(Who lived at the elbow in Orleans
With my Aunt Margery who raised Nubian goats.)
But back to Great Island.
2
That day, we parked, Shirley and I,
And no sooner had we started into the pines
Then we came to a granite monument
Facing the sky
Decorated with stones and shells,
With the inscription:
Here lies an Indian woman
A Wampanoag
Whose family and tribe
Gave of themselves and their land
That this great nation
Might be born and grow
Reinterred here May, 30, 1976
Wampanoag Tribal Council
Wellfleet Historical Society
She lived in the 1500s.
Her remains were found
During a house excavation in 1953.
At the reinterment ceremony
Led by the Tribal Elders,
Curator emeritus Helen Purcell said:
"Small Indian woman
We cannot restore you
Like Lazarus, to life
But we can release you . . .
And return you
To the elemental dignity of death . . . "
3
I always felt that Great Island was a special place.
I have always found it welcoming,
A place unto itself.
No matter what mood I brought,
I always felt lighter there.
Easier.
Especially in the summer
When the salted air is redolent of pine and wild rose
And the slightly rank and fishy perfume
Of seaweed pushed high and dry by the last high tide
To bake in the sun.
We had been walking leisurely along the beach
At mid-low tide for about an hour
When I spotted something strange
About two hundred feet out in the bay.
It was something large and U-shaped
Right on top of an exposed rock
Glinting metallically in the sun.
Was it a sculpture?
Some kind of installation?
I was intrigued
And waded out to get a closer look.
Gradually the U-shape, which never moved
Assumed the aspect of a seal.
(He or she must be doing some kind of seal-yoga.)
As I stood there, up to my waist in water,
About a hundred feet left between us,
It's hard to recapture what I was feeling
But it was something like awe, befuddlement
And amusement.
It was as if I had chanced upon a monk in zazen.
I guess I thought that something should happen
As things usually do.
What I mean to say is,
As soon as I realized it was a seal
I thought that it should move,
Dive off the rock and swim off.
But instead, it held its U-shape
While I stood there watching.
And then I began to wonder if I should leave it alone
Since this was all unprecedented
And I was out of my depth, so to speak.
But then I began to think that maybe something was wrong with it,
Or maybe not with the seal so much,
But with the whole picture,
As if everything that was happening
Had sort of slipped out of sync with the script,
Of our walk on the beach,
As if the movie had stopped
And I was out of ways to respond.
And then it came to me,
That the moment was waiting for my response.
And then my response came,
Right up through me with no warning.
I started to sing to this seal.
There were words in my song.
Loving words, gentle,
Maybe even beguiling words
Of praise and appreciation.
As I think of it
It might have been a love song!
While I serenaded this seal in zazen
It never moved a flipper.
It was I who had to move.
I turned and headed back to the beach to rejoin Shirley
Who had been watching
And listening the whole time.
It was right as I reached the shore
That Shirley told me to turn around.
The seal had slipped off the rock
And was swimming to shore,
Following me in!
I found a place to sit on a stone
Just up from the water's edge
And waited to see how close the seal would come.
When she (I'm going to call her she from now on)
Reached the shallows,
To our surprise,
She continued to struggle clear of the waves
Galumphing to within
Less than eight feet from where I was sitting
Where she stopped and rolled onto her side.
She looked at me with her huge black eyes.
Then she lazily scanned the beach.
Then she just relaxed into sun-bathing mode,
The picture of happiness.
There we stayed just like that
For probably half an hour,
But how much time actually passed I don't know.
Again, it was I who grew restless.
My new friend seemed just as happy
Lying next to me on the beach
As she was when she was doing yoga on the rock.
Something had to break the spell.
It was a big horsefly that landed on my seal friend.
I could see that it meant business.
Sure enough, I began to see blood pooling around the damn fly.
I asked myself, what is the protocol here?
I reasoned, beneath her skin is a thick layer of fat.
Does she feel that? Probably not.
She must feel that!
I decided to be be proactive
So I took a short step, reached out
And swatted the horsefly
At which she stretched out her neck and throat
And let out a resounding bellow of distress.
I was immediately sorry that I swatted her,
Realizing that I had misjudged the situation
And had crossed a line.
I don't remember what happened next
But I think she decided
That our first and last date was over.
So that was one of the happiest moments
Of my adult life,
The time I spent with that remarkable seal.
Why did I mention the grave of the Native American woman
Whose remains were reburied at Great Island?
Because I can't help but think that encountering that grave
Was what started a non-ordinary sequencing of events.
When I saw the grave and read the inscription
I felt that from that point
We crossed some kind of threshold into
More than just a special place
But a sacred place.
You might ask,
Am I projecting this awareness onto a memory
For the sake of spinning a story?
My answer is no,
That is how it was.
Whether I placed a stone or shell on the monument,
I don't recall,
But my attitude was reverential, initially,
And after that, thoughtful and reserved.
That's really all I have to say about this.
It's something I've been wanting to share.
(Article changed on Dec 13, 2022 at 1:56 PM EST)
(Article changed on Dec 13, 2022 at 2:16 PM EST)
(Article changed on Dec 13, 2022 at 5:09 PM EST)
