Grassfires

It was the kind of night you'd have written home about.

The moon was full and yellow, high in the sky and surrounded by sparkling stars against a clear and deeply dark sky.  The night air was summery with just the right hint of coolness breezing softly off the ocean.  We could hear the tide, diminished and gentle, as it washed up against the breakwater pilings.  At rest in the cove, the fishing boats glimmered in the light from the moon, their illuminated reflections barely moving in the nearly glass surface of the water.  We walked slowly and unhurriedly, trying to be light with our footsteps and not disturb the night, trying to make it last.  We rounded The Old Road and came in sight of The Point, starkly lit in the moonlight, so still and serene that it seemed staged, so calm and quiet that every step seemed like trespassing.  I will remember this night, I thought, will remember how this feels for always - the wildflowers in the field, the blackberry patch, the lights of Westport, the look of home in the moonlight - and the tall young man with the dark red hair holding my hand.  This, I thought, is what it feels like to be young and in love and unafraid.  This is what we're all looking for, a place with quiet waters and a touch of magic in the salt air.  But
even for a hopeless romantic - I'm pleased to say I was and still am one - such nights are not meant to last.  By the time the church bells began ringing in the morning, the rough and tumble ocean was back to its old self and the moonlight was gone.  

Apart from the two people involved, no one took these summer romances terribly seriously.  Island boys and girls from away coupled each June and uncoupled just as easily each September.  In between, they might burn like grassfires - bright and quick to start but doomed to transience - they did no real lasting damage and if hearts were broken on Labor Day, they were patched by Halloween.  A grassfire can't be restarted on burnt ground so none were ever repeated, a reality no one questioned or even found passing strange.  Like the changing of the seasons, friends became lovers and lovers became friends and the world kept turning.  Your fella might trail after you if he'd a mind to make some extra cash by picking apples in the Maine orchards but all it really meant was putting off the inevitable.  No summer romance ever got a decent foothold past Labor Day and that was, as we all knew, exactly how it was supposed to be.  There was summer...and there was real life...they might mingle but they did not marry.

Still, if you were sweet sixteen and walking home from the dance in the company of the moonlight and a whispering ocean, none of that mattered in the slightest.  Everyone has nights they wouldn't trade for all the world's gold and this was one of mine.

I didn't write home about it.  I couldn't find the words.