(Haena Beach Park / Tunnels Beach, north shore Kauai)

“See that stretch of beach there?”
Dick says as we drive by. “That little cove?”
I nod.

“One time I was here—must’ve been 40 years ago—
I drove up here by myself, and right there, on that beach,
I saw a rainbow way out over the ocean. It was getting
to be sunset, and I had an hour’s drive back to where
I was staying, but I parked and got out of the car.
And there, down at the edge of that beach,
was a horse tethered, munching on some grass.

“I stood on the road above the beach and made
only two frames, shooting Kodachrome,
and left, hoping I’d gotten a decent shot.
But it turned out they were both way overexposed.
In those days you couldn’t save ’em.”

I hear the regret in his voice as we make the short
trip back to our cottage very near that cove.
Though we’ve often seen horses munching on tufts
of green here, neither of us recalls seeing horses
on this stretch of sand in decades of visits.

We lie down for a little rest before sunset,
though not for long. Dick rises to head to
the beach to check out the sunset.

You never know: Some nights it’s fantastic;
some nights it’s just OK. But even when it’s just OK,
it’s pretty fabulous—the mountains jaggedly
stair-stepping to the sea, punctuated at the end
by triangular Mount Makana.

Dick heads out on foot while I sit this one out.
He comes back, sweaty and excited, with a story:

“I walk out there and there’s a not bad sunset,
which I’m shooting, when I turn around to see
two horses and riders coming toward me
on the sand, near the water’s edge, a black dog
running around them. I back up higher on the beach
to give them space. When they get to the flat point
in the sand that curves around the beach, they stop
and slowly walk the horses into the surf
up to their ankles.

“I watch, hoping they’d go far enough to get
Makana and the sunset behind them, and,
after the dog has fun in the water, gradually
they continue down the shore.”

We look at the photos now on his computer:
Silhouetted riders and horses perfectly positioned,
one with an artistically bent foreleg bent,
the dog running ahead, Makana’s dark triangle
against a not-bad sunset,

another gift of synchronicity on
another kickin’ day in paradise.