And so it goes

So it seems that as we were peering out to sea today, convinced that the water spout we could see ("At two o'clock, two o'clock," laughed Andrea) was a whale (a very late whale, a slow whale, or possibly a drunk whale, way behind the pack), while the penguins (pelicans) were hovering over the water, and men were shouting loudly from the deck to the children on the beach, digging a hole to China (which, alarmingly, when they jumped in, their heads couldn't be seen because the hole was so deep), Sydney Pollack was dying in the Pacific Palisades, surrounded by his family and friends, from a cancer he hadn't talked about. I hope that he too was looking out at that brilliant ocean and the flawless banks of high clouds because it was a beautiful day, a perfect Memorial Day, and he was a good man, a real journeyman and he died as elegantly as he lived, on a blue day over the Pacific.