Time Out Tuesday: Somewhere There’s a Day at the Beach

<p>Hello to you listening in <a href="https://newengland.com/today/travel/maine/guide-to-blue-hill-peninsula-blue-hill-maine-deer-isle-maine/" target="_blank">Blue Hill, Maine</a>!</p><p>Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is Stories From Women Who Walk with 60 Seconds (and a bit more) for Time Out Tuesday and your host, Diane Wyzga.</p><p>Sometimes art and beauty are all I have to offer. There is always time for poetry; and more so in these days of interrupted summer.  </p><p><i><strong>A Day at the Beach</strong></i></p><p><i>“If he had been paying more attention</i></p><p><i>to whatever my mother was saying</i></p><p><i>from under her hat beneath the umbrella,</i></p><p><i>or watching more closely over my brother,</i></p><p><i>off playing somewhere with his shovel and pail,</i></p><p><i>or me, idly tracing my name in the sand,</i></p><p><i>if he hadn't had that faraway look,</i></p><p><i>gazing out to where the freighters crawled along</i></p><p><i>the horizon – so that when he suddenly</i></p><p><i>pushed up and off, sand in his wake, visor</i></p><p><i>taking wing behind him, you could believe,</i></p><p><i>as he churned toward the glassy water,</i></p><p><i>that it had just come to him to chuck it all,</i></p><p><i>this whole idea of family, and make</i></p><p><i>for those southbound freighters and the islands –</i></p><p><i>then he might have never seen the arm heaved up,</i></p><p><i>the lifeguards running just as my father</i></p><p><i>was lifting the old man out of the surf</i></p><p><i>and bearing him ashore, the blue receding</i></p><p><i>from his cramped limbs. And as a crowd closed around</i></p><p><i>the gasping figure struggling to his knees,</i></p><p><i>my father turned back to us – sheepishly,</i></p><p><i>almost, back to the endless vigilance</i></p><p><i>of husband and of father, which was all</i></p><p><i>he had ever asked for in the first place</i>.”</p><p>"A Day at the Beach" by Peter Schmitt, from Hazard Duty. © Copper Beach Press, 1995.</p><p><strong>You’re invited</strong