The mimosa trees were all in bloom. They swayed gently in roadside breezes, their pink blossoms like a doll's powder puff. Their sweet perfume was carried on the air and was a comfort to a young traveler, sad to be driving home after a blessed few days at the seashore. The light was golden in the early evening, and it was warm. The air streaming through the open car windows rustled a plastic bag in the back seat (filled with lush red tomatoes) so that its incessant rattling, and the pleasure of the wind, and the mimosa's fragrance became a quietly lyrical backdrop to the driver's recollection of the ocean.

He pictured the wide expanse of sea and his long afternoons dreaming in the sand to the hypnotic roar of the surf. The sky had been an endlessness of blue. The gulls laughed.

One night he had gone exploring and found an unexpected little place, only one town away from where he had summered as a child, so that its existence had all the more surprised him. It was a breakwater between bay and ocean, on a perfectly secluded little beach. The moon was up and made the sea glow in the enchanted way beloved of old maritime painters. The ocean boomed against the dark rocks, sending great spurts of sea spray high into the air. The young man was anointed by them when the wind changed direction. His thoughts were of the sublime, his existence seemed somehow remote from him, he thought of Poseidon, of immensity, of nothing at all. He gazed at the water and watched the ocean fiercely crash into the small space allotted it between the rocks--a white churning chaos which just as fiercely receded again. There was not a footstep on the small beach. Part of a Keats poem came to him, and he said aloud in a low voice:

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell...

He drove on toward the city, musing. The mimosa trees were becoming less and less frequent. He passed large cultivated fields filling with twilight. The telephone poles passed by swiftly, dark in the blue light. He felt tired and sad. The street lamps would come on soon.

As he approached the bridge, his trip already began to feel as though it had happened long ago. He could see the lights of the city gleaming in the heavy night air.

The car stopped for the toll, and the stillness after the rush of wind through the car felt unusual, a peculiar lull. He could now feel just how stifling the air was. The toll collector had music on in her lighted cell and smiled at him kindly. Such graciousness on the part of toll collectors, at least in his city, was an exception, and it made coming home a little easier. As he crossed into Philadelphia, he saw in his peripheral vision the large black Blessed Virgin Mary looming above the cement divider. The church on which she stood was hidden below so that she appeared like some strange vision of the highway. As he passed, she too seemed to bless him.

Lynne can be reached via email at: campbell_lynne@hotmail.com.