Serene

There is a place that I know, thousands of miles away, I go there often. During the day it is a golf course on the beach. Paradise. To the golfers it offers a hundred dollars a hole to forget your kids, your wife, and the black lacy panties that don't belong to her. Ah, but at night the moon reveals a different world. As twilight looms the ocean breaths, carrying away the stink of alcohol and shame. Here fear hangs like the opaque curtains of an agoraphobic; inside there is no immediate danger but with a flicker of a finger it lies just beyond... Still now, even the wind begins to bate her breath, respectfully, lest she tempts the air. This place, this vast emptiness of moonlit darkness acts as a rite of passage for me. I brave the night because I know what lies beyond the rough, just over the sand dunes and across the beach.
When I go there I feel like I am trespassing, my heart demands a safe passage as it beats like a tribal drum. My feet trample the manicured lawn, aware of the grass' plight I glance down at the serene ammophila as they individually and collectively reflect the moon. From their roots they stretch towards the sky demanding freedom but instead are left carrying the borrowed rays on their backs as a burden, branded as captives by their only means of hope (stupid, beautiful grass). A lifetime passes and I am forced to live it aware of every footstep, every breath, and every tiny individual hair on my body inching out to stand on end--waiting to know when the wind will have to breathe again stirring the fear (revealing goosebumps not as reactors to danger but as detectors of it). Alone. I am most aware of that vulnerable word.
Serenity, anyone who has crossed those dunes can confirm that here it is the sky that mirrors the ocean and not the other way around. Everything gleams and moves, everything that is except time, that remains only as a memory of the world I just left, a place ruled by the gentle persistence of tick tock. I wonder if I have discovered the fountain of youth. I sit alone, not bothered by the word now. I lean back and allow the waves to pilfer my worries till I am left naked and drained of all thought. The tide rises and I drown in rebirth.
Chaos calls to me from the peace and I must return. In the second passing I am at first unaware of the blackness and cross bravely. I am invisible and cannot at first see my tiny hairs now standing at attention telling me to run. I fail to make my peace offering to the night for safe passage and I begin to sprint--the way a child will dash up the darkened basement stairs convinced of being chased by a murderer--Oh, how easy it is to forget the calm... I go there often...