Turning Tides...A Personal Reflection About Life

As an oceanographer by training, it seemed like a natural extension of a professional career surrounded by oceans, that retiring would naturally be near water and a beach, preferably a Caribbean island. Well, how does the expression go? “Watch what you wish for, it may come true.”  I made it. I landed on that beach.

But age, wisdom, sore bones and other stuff that goes along with getting old caught up with my visions of endless summers, surfing, wild days and nights of youth (but with money to enjoy more excesses) and a long bucket list of things still needed to do.

What happened when landing on this beach is different than I expected. It became a time to think instead of playing, extending my professional career, texting, watching TV, socializing or consuming.

It became a time of reflections. Sometimes those thoughts were “Woulda’s, Coulda’s, and Shoulda’s.”  But I tried to stay more positive in these thoughts because travel was fatal to my prejudices, bigotry and narrow-mindedness acquired by only vegetating in a little corner of this Earth.

The summary below is part of that thinking.  Life is good. It is precious. Even more precious than I thought about for the last 60-some years.  No more time to waste or use casually.

And now, I’ve landed on this beach
That took some sixty years to reach
As this generation of mine
is ordered to life’s front line

Reluctantly we roam this beach
Advancing to fill up the breach
Created by that fallen corps
Of elders that were here before
While we enjoyed our middle age

We knew, before we found this beach
The enemy that we besiege
Has ammunition for us all
Not one will manage to survive
No one leaves this beach alive

For those arriving on this beach
There is no prayer to pray or preach
Since we’ve outlived dying young
And for surviving, in exchange
Now face life at point blank range

What we witness on this beach
Has but one lesson for to teach
Here the carnage never stops
Everyday another drops
Some classmate, relative, or friend
Is attacked to abrupt end

So on into the breach my peers
Who knows how many weeks or years
Remain ‘til you and I are hit
As we inch onward bit by bit
We only know our lives will bleach
Eternally out on this beach