Specimen Days, after Whitman

Sardine

From the front yard it takes only a walk across the street and a quick dip into the north shore of Monona under a late afternoon sun to see the bottom of the lake heading north toward the capital.  Fry and their mothers and fathers flitting about like silver dashes – they scoot to the sound of the paddle in under the lake bottom grass.  Most of the seen world from here is blue and green, the lush introduction of summer as it comes to thrive and the boats of all sizes are out.  North shore lined with tall old homes, old backyards that have evolved, over time, to mazes of jasmine and buttercup.  Terraces zig zag by old stone steps and willows wag back and forth – boathouses, small as apartments, at the foot of the shore line, at the lip of the rip rap, to which you wonder if a small flood might not inundate at a moment's notice; one such, homemade, an all glass front, driftwood for benches inside so able to watch fisherman from the sleek boats cast inwards towards the house.  No sailors yet, but the occasional fishing kayak plodding along the bankline.  Out ahead is the Monona Terrace leaning into the lake as if peaking, keeping watch, its strange marshmallow lines floating above the blue line of water.  It's all a scatter of docks and lifted boats before Machinery Row where I'm headed to Sardine, the great seafood restaurant of Madison, the big French that has its seat at the window of the sea like those at Marseille, Nice, Antibes, Juan le Pins.  I think that it is hard to be a French restaurant without this scene of the Mediterranean.  The open breeze that enters the long doors and high ceilings, the 

balcony seating where those seated have to wear sunglasses against the sheen of yellow off the flittering chop of water.  There are few people here; it is early; happy hour; a pastis, anise aperitif, seems fitting. Nostalgic for Aix en Provence where any number of backdoor cafes lay inside its maze of the city and where the men and women have been sipping their favorite muddy drink since siesta saying, well, let it all be damned, all damned, we have the sea, we have the oysters that were quite recently received from shoals just below this city center.  And that, I see from the kayak entering into the small cut out of a city bay, is Sardine.  Gulls circle and scream.  The soft stoke of a flat bottom leaves the transient slip and is off to the next.  I remember that rural Italians spend all of sunday eating more courses than there are hours; the French could nibble away a day...but there must be the cadence of the blue water to see and smell and hear where the hours have off and blown away.