Not more than a moment after school has let out for the summer and I am put to a test. More papers- letter grades as such and more words words words- but have I learned anything? Do I listen more closely of voices contrary-wise to my own? Can I speak without presumptuous notions and regard the good of the whole? I see you, but I cannot save you. I hear you, but I cannot banish the resounding silence of fear. I love you, and that is all I know.

Because we were just kids who didn’t know yet what was ahead of us; we laughed freely. Now damn this flame against the wind.

“Do you believe in destiny?” Daniel asked. “Like we were all supposed to be here?”

“Yeah, probably,” I replied.

Fifteen years and I’ve not found such solidarity in thought nor in action as I have here with friends. Dragonflies’ flight like erratic brush strokes against a chorus of frogs and cicadas announcing their existence, heard only and not seen. The wind-songs of the south nothing like the northern chorus of stark contrast with beast and beats divided as Bach and G-Eazy- each renowned in their own right.

“Dragonfly whiz by and sing now teach it.” 

Poets and dreamers and the like toil with words and ways to give the moon her dues and here I will not try except to say we weaved and bounded along the beach under a full golden sovereign lunar expanse pushing and pulling tides and fates and illuminating our fates yet not our years. Easy laughter liberated from heavy resolutions. The boys tear off their shirts and tie them round their heads like juvenile crowns and rap nonsensical lyrics against the wind and the girls keep pace and talk of other wonders as if we aren’t all tasting our twenties but reminiscent of our teens. And by God if there aren’t red lights revolving in an unworldly synchronicity, a mile off over a luminescent Atlantic and before true fear and paranoia overtake us we boast our impending fates with the Martians surely coming and the lights now green and white pulsing against heat lightning and us embracing delirious reality and if we had to be taken at least we shall go together and finally where art thou Will Smith when we are in need of the MIB?

“Will Smith!” I cry out.

“Wilson!” My sister replies.

Wrong beach misadventure, I intone.

Here at the least I have listened and heard a language my mind is unable to decipher elsewhere. I know not always by mine eyes yet I see and I look with eyes wide open and know this exchange as friendship. As it has always been. This simplest truth the greatest fortune. Until we meet again.