The Performance

The morning waited for me to take my seat on the foreshore bench to begin its play, perform the piece it had scripted just for me. Opening with a prelude of waves lifting until gravity collapsed their curling height and gulped down their weight, and, at stage right, rocks bursting big watery bags of ocean into exploding walls of foam. Then there were magpies holding chorus in the nearby trees, accompanying the moment with an almost Elizabethan lilt whilst seagulls hurled their screeching taunts down from the galleries above. Little dogs went chasing balls and children spun, unwinding on wound up swings, bike riders in black lycra passed in a blurr and on a patch of lawn beside the pavilion, three women practicing tai chi. And so the spectacle ran on as if the morning was inventing new sights and sounds for the sake of drawing out time to keep me captive in audience there, the same as I used to do when, as a child, I held concert for my grandmother on cold winter afternoons, stagelit by a blazing fire and love.