Another way things might be.

There is this man. He has walked to the sea. There is nowhere to sit, and so he stands, here under the wind-bared trees, stands with his arms akimbo (the very word sends his mind roaming on a laugh), stands and watches the line where water meets beach, where water meets water, where water meets sky. He is surrounded by a world of meeting water. When he has met all the meetings before him, he tips back his head, learns the tracery of branch crossing branch below the white sky. Cathedral rib, he whispers. Rood screen. Iconostasis. Somewhere near are rocks, the shore's minor mountains. This place is not that other place: he will tell it by its stars, when they show. For now, the buttresses do not stop flying. Before him space lightens, largens, would become a pale abyss in which he could be lost were it not for that darkness of matter, that branching carving and cradling of openness over the shining ground behind him. The tree to his left and the tree to his right have arched into indistinguishability. He twitches each elbow's arch, remembers how being lost is no unequivocal thing, keeps his feet planted, watches. Above him a knock, the whirring gurgle of a bird he has heard before. He looks, catches the clip of red as the woodpecker--no shorebird, fellow transplant--leaves these shadows to him alone. He stands where he has stood, here where he has walked, here where he sings, sole, and slow.

source for tonight's image: The New York Times.