ALL QUIET
ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Hermosa Beach, California

I sit with computer and coffee on a deck overlooking the pool, and the beach.

The sun has yet to breach the huddled-housed hill behind me, casting its net, nevertheless, over the ocean and far sky. At the end of the ocean the water is a line of darkish green from which rises a mist of pink, and above that blue. The ocean is not a turquoise, but sheen of azure cerulean blueness, surfers lining its nearer end, awaiting their crests. So little sound.

Volleyball nets sag. The pier juts into the azure cerulean, a single lamp on a pole at its end. A gentle quiet.

It is quiet, just the continuous light wave noise, rushing onto sand here, ebbing there, a continuous presence in the air, yet a welcomed one.

Dark Mexican women carrying bags arrive for work. A plane rises into the blue from LAX, just a few miles up the beach. A man pushes a stroller along the strand, another passes him on a bicycle. All is serene, here in the morning, all movement on the strand passing by soundlessly.

Seagulls congregate to the left, the south, toward Redondo, massed stillness, sleep. A lone woman sits on a swing, staring at the surfer who has just risen, wavering, onto his mound.

Women jog by on the strand. An older man in a red shirt and glasses, awaiting his wife, stands against the railing, staring. Trash trucks move slowly along the strand, their gentle intrusion quickly passing. A large tanker pushes slowly out to sea as a smaller, white fishing boat slides by, about four hundred yards off the beach. I sip my coffee, large-to-go from Scotty's by the Strand, tap out these few words. All is quiet on the western front.

I am alone at the Sea Sprite. It is early morning, before I enter the cacophony.