The Long Way Home From Indian River

There is a distance to my home, not half the road behind me. Yet I sit and watch the sun go down on Indian River. My food and beer are done, and still I stare at quiet water, green ripples of sea grass, and tailing redfish. I could retreat the sooner, my cooling motorcycle waits to take me back to my beginnings. I might then gain familiar rest before the darkness settles in. Yet with sunset fading, I hold to this encounter: a piece of the horizon, a portion of the sunset, a beaker of the night. Would I return the shorter way, omit circuitous wandering, an easy road I'd find, but I must choose the stranger route, and unfamiliar pleasure, solitude in afterglow, discreet, sequestered treasure.