Doug Norris

Little Compton

The road to Warrens Point skirts a neighborhood of million-dollar homes, ending at a beach with rock formations that extend into the sea. After an hour hauled out on my own private ledge like an old seal, listening to the sea slap and chop, gurgle and slosh, watching buffleheads bob and harlequins dive and herring gulls pester a fishing boat in the distance, I reluctantly got up to leave. Compelled by my obligations and resigned to the fleeting freedoms afforded to trespassers, I met my appointment at a country home less than a mile from the town common, in a place with wild gardens, a barn and horses. But I felt a twinge of disappointment that I was where I was, at the cusp of a day of deadlines and duty, instead of where I had been, enjoying a morning of reverie. When I approached the door, a small black-and-white cat tried to get inside, squeezing between my leg and the open screen. “It’s a barn cat,” Mary said, smiling, when she met me at the doorway, “but it wants to be a house cat.”

lazy frog
the sun on a lily pad
this floating world