HermitIsland, Maine

We went camping, the whole crew, C, M, B, H, A and I. S couldn't make it, but we wrote in the sand on the water against a sunset, Bite Me S and sent him the photo via my blackberry. Trekked on a trail along cliffsides and saw the sea, the Atlantic, churning against black rock and silica for two hours. Boiled lobsters on our campfire, wincing as we stuck them live and wriggling in the pot. We stood along the pot and gave them an elegy though. Then took the JD out to the sand, a few metres from our tents (I pitched a tent!) and under the moonlight, talked without agenda or burden. Slept in our tents as the Maine winds howled across the dunes. In the morning we rose to the dawn and made campfire bacon and eggs and potatoes, went shell-picking and prising barnacles off the rocks and watching them wince. Read poetry standing on top of the rocks far into the sea. And everything was right with the world. Then we piled into the car and drove back to Boston with the windows down and the song from the JC Penney Sweater Commercial on high and repeat. A brief moment, snatched from the jaws of time.