Washington coast

The sound of the rain came back last night, choking the corner gutter. The feeling when life pulls away in some irreversible moment, a large ship moving out from the dock and everyone running down to the end of it crying and waving goodbye, all the ropes undone, the sun going down, the figures on the ship outside doing the same, all waving but getting smaller, it may be the last time they’ll be that close. And then you watch the boat get smaller and the sound of the gulls fills in and it’s time to get back to whatever life there is next.

The rain made that sound like a metal drum, irregular beats. I went outside before bed just to be in it and listen to the ground percolating, no stars, a blanket of clouds. The dog smacks her lips, sighs. There’s been a million days like this it seems, we vector outside ourselves to the edges, the end of another season. I thought the sound of the kids in the morning was like springtime birds, sometimes vexing but you dread the day it goes quiet. Now it’s infrequent geese overhead, instead.

I put on a new record for my mom and said listen, this is one of my favorite songs. But you can’t make out anything the singer’s saying and it doesn’t matter, mom says it’s maybe better, you can imagine something for yourself. Some force came through her vocals and they recorded it and it’s still coming through me, like the echo of the waves in one of those hollowed out rocks, some queer, found music somewhere distant and unknown, better, that I can have it all to myself.

Categories: prose

Tags: Cocteau Twins, environmental music, found music, pacific northwest, parenting, William Pearse writer