The night sea

I stood on the shore and it was raining like it had been the day before...Sheets of rain pelting the earth soft sand. Flicking it up onto my feet as they bare dug deeper into the soaked beach...
Wet from tip to toe I was cold from the wind,too cold to do anything but shiver uncontrollably. My hair clung to my face and neck in desperation as I surveyed the beautiful storm playing out in front of me.I had the best seat in the house for the spectacular show of nature.

I don't know how long I stood there, waiting but never wanting it to end...The silence was deafening to my ears a painful still that haunted me, enticing me into the sea as it lapped up and down. Waiting,with all the time in the world...Forwards creeping up the shore line...Further and further only stopping at the hight water mark.

I stepped into the crest of the first wave and jumped over the second, the water a warm shelter from the breeze...I dived under the third wave and swam counting to ten strokes under the water till I came up for air.
Each stroke more difficult than the last, leaving me feeling dazed and all my muscles aching as oxygen pumped through them again...I looked at the harbor wall about 300m from me to the east and kept swimming to the buoys that I thought were nets the first time I swam to them with my cousin Melch...I think we both got a fright as we had been edging eachother on with shark stories and how Mossel Bay is known for its Great Whites...I remember not swimming fast enough to get back to the shore...Imagined evil luring under my frantic kicking legs and stressed lungs. I saw pictures of sharks coming right into the white shallow water to catch prey...That horrible helpless feeling as the ebbing water washes back a different colour.

But now as I swam on my own in the fading light of dusk I felt only a tingle of excitement at the unknown beneath me...Scuba diving couldn't really help an irrational fear in my mind as you realize just what is under you...And sometimes it can be worse than you imagined. Some fish I find scary...esp the little ones that try and bite your fingers off when you're only trying to be friendly....Granted I do sometimes entice them by rubbing my thumb on my index finger my other fingers curled as if I have something. But other times I don't do anything at all and they start on me all over...Ears, face, hands, my ankles. Everywhere they can.

I was swimming up and down parallel to the shore line along the line of buoys pacing, waiting as if for something but nothing in particular. The cool clear dusk air sweeping across the ocean towards me. When I heard a car pull into the parking lot above the beach stretched out on either side of it...I tred water looking to see who it was, but the sun was setting as I looked into the lowered fading light making it almost impossible for me to tell who it was. I knew they could see me clearly and that bothered me more than the thought of sharks circling below me on the expressionless ocean sand flung this way and that by the surge of the tide.But no need the voice calling me was familiar...