A bower in the Arsacides

Water shifted in the wet sand between my toes, ingraving my footprints as the sand washed away from my skin, another step, and the water following like a cloud chasing the sun. It was as if I had never been. I stared at the sand where my footprint wore away, and then shifted my gaze out to sea.

Hemingway once said that everything we have is to give, but it came to me then that everything I had was never mine, and after I die, my bones will pass like dust in the wind over the great Spainish pine forests, and the tall grass glades by the grain, not trapped to some famous canvase, but maybe resting on the surface of a great green sea.
It would be lovely to be a part of a beautiful painting, so when all look upon it, they look at my bones and they may say what a wonderful paining that Mona Lisa is, or that it is something done by Vermeer or Dali, with my bones like white dust resting on a window sill in the sunlight. But I would prefer to remain a part of the most wonderful painting of all. It does not stay still, the wave is not caught in the brush, no dust to catch the corners, and there is no wild bird caught in the sky like some frozen shadow trapped in the sea.

I turn back to the beach, at the sunny grey waves, and do a cartwheel in the sand.