Musings: What's the Matter?

A bright light woke me in the wee hours and I looked out, wondering if one of my neighbors had turned on their floodlights. But no, it was the rising moon — Mahina, a perfect golden half.

Four hours later she is white and high in a bluing sky and the dogs and I are standing beneath her on  a beach that has been washed clean by an agitated sea. Everything is moving fast — the clouds, the water, the flying flecks of foam. Squalls hug the horizon, where boobies are having a field day dive-bombing the wild waves.

The sun, trapped behind a solid block of gray, finally breaks free, casting a rosy, shimmering path upon the frothing sea and then the rain starts moving in, dampening us, chasing us mauka, toward the car and a double rainbow — one thick, one faint — and a flock of ruddy turnstones, careening at sharp angles.

It's all so magnificent, so alive, so vibrant, that I laugh, whoop, say a little gratitude prayer, "Mahalo." There is only joy within me, and delight.

Then I reach the highway and see a tourist couple in an economy compact huddled against the guardrail and two cars flying past them, crossing the double line, horns blaring, the second driver thrusting a fist with stick finger extended out his window, a message apparently intended for the tourists. 

The rainbow is still there, but fading. I wonder if any of them see it. I cling to the joy, but it's fading, too.

“Good grief,” I say to the dogs. “What's the matter with people?”