Anna Maria Island description

The waves pulsed across the dimmed sand, softly crashing like a baby's cry; they mimicked each other, the foam of each recycling in its follower. These copy-cat waves were the green-blue of a crayon drawing, chartreuse and cerulean, the sea painted my eyes. I sat amidst the cozy, pillow-mounds of sand, my fingers and toes creeping lower into the damper coolness of the aged sand underneath: the unwavering character of sand which persisted beneath the blowing frailty of white sand which flit with the ocean breeze. The seagulls came to worship the finder of their feast as they flocked to the dismembereed crab, flayed and laying helpless as he deteriorated at the beaks of these white cloaked vultures. Moments later there were only three left, stiffly waddling about with the swagger of an assassin, around the emancipated shell of the crab carcass shoving their insatiable beaks into the fragile, hazel shell til it cracked in agony and surrendered the crumbs of flesh it had hidden--and as soon as they had come, the gulls had gone leaving me to look once more at this recycling beach, filling within each moment the sonorous shout of death and the gentle whisper of birth. In a way nothing ever stayed the same; in a way it always did, as the fleeting lives of the waves and the sand captured at every interval an equal scene. The brash, dirty waters of the mid-Atlantic I was used to haunted me 'til I felt guilty as the ocean's azure portrait sieged my eyes with sparkle. Acrid summers of scalding sand and icicle waters moaned its surrender as I fell in love with Anna Maria--no bustle of elementary school vacations, no tacky umbrellas littering a tranquil scene (for there was no need), simply the lightly salted scent of untainted waters filling my lusting nostrils, if home is where the heart is, Lord, I am home.