By six o’clock the day has given up its argument with the heat and settled into something like acceptance.
The boats come in. Men who don’t say much say less, and the harbor understands.
I walk the same road I have walked for years now, past the same live oaks draped in the same patient Spanish moss, and think: this is what it means to stay somewhere.
Not adventure. Not departure. The accumulation of the same light falling on the same water until the water knows your name.
The pelicans are indifferent to all of this. They have their own theology — pragmatic, fish-centered, unapologetic — and I find it restful.
By the time I’m back the porch light is on. Someone has left the door unlocked.
I stand outside a moment longer, in the last of the light, the way you stand at the edge of something good before you go inside.