On the flat platform of rock

A few barely noticed mid afternoon bodies prostrate

Themselves on unforgiving final outcrop of land

Before the oceanic vastness of swells and laps at the feet

The obligatory stroking of sun on the back then front

Precedes the immersion in a chilled pool

Without talk, without reason, without looking

The few supplicants to natural blessing take their isolated turn

Stripped of clothing and other company

A ritual of repose if not something deeper, intangible, overwhelming

The habitual yet always unaccustomed

meeting of the human with another realm

Known with unknown, become with becoming,

Smaller crustated rock pools have been here for a generation and more before that

And over there, on the platform, huge rocks split vastly

measure ancient time in their own supplication

Yet the long trembling sculpturing waves have barely begun

To beat the time of day, as a slow rhythm begins,

In the chill of watery surround, bodies slide into a salt blessed future

For a time they are freed of themselves, they move outside history

They are formed and reformed by a moving, monumental  sea-born mystery.