R.E.M. CORP.

08/31/2026

08/17/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Jvpm6GBbz/

It was a night of passing storms off Cape May,
when I went down to the recently updated Harbor View Park
to photograph the Lobster House fleet
riding the dark water under restless skies.
I was lost in shutter speeds, aperture and ISO,
blind to everything but the lights on the boats,
when the squall closed in sideways
and drove me under the new gazebo’s roof.
There completely unnoticed by me for the last hour in the shadows sat an older man,
disheveled, quiet, watching me the whole time.
I said hello. The rain found us both.
I took off my light coat and gave it to him,
then sat close enough to block the worst of the wind and rain from pelting him
We stayed there more than an hour,
watching lightning walk the horizon
while the fleet rocked at its moorings.
He told me he had lived his whole here, 
merchant marine first, then fisherman
up and down the East Coast for decades.
He spoke of Shirley the way a man speaks
of the one true harbor he ever found.
She had been gone years, and still
he carried her like a chart he refused to fold.
Then he said, almost to the rain itself:
“Life goes by in the blink of an eye.
One day you’re hauling pots in a northeast gale,
the next you’re sitting under a gazebo
wondering where the years went.
Don’t waste the precious time you’ve got.
Be bolder while the tide still runs in your favor.
Time is sweeter than honey,
worth more than any catch or coin.
Don’t wait until you’re old to live it.
Youth is wasted on the young
who think the ocean will always wait.
Sing the songs you wish you’d sung.
Do the things you keep putting off.
Find someone who makes you laugh
the way Shirley made me laugh.
Live each moment like the last set of the day.
Say I love you every night.
Say I’m sorry when the storm between you rises.
Leave the anger on the dock and walk away.”
When the rain finally eased he stood,
handed back the coat, and pressed my hand.
“Go live your life, son.
I hope these words serve you well.”
I never took a single keeper that night.
The photographs were nothing.
But the hour under the gazebo,
with the old fisherman who had sailed the world
and still missed his Shirley,
remains one of the best things
I have ever brought home from the late night photo shoot.

08/08/2026

The Milky Way sneaks across the quiet waters of Ridgevale Beach in Chatham. About an hour later, the waning moon would arrive to brighten the skies.