on the mud-green bay;
a curving wake,
and pale sides fingered
by vigilant sunbeams.
All around
stood the dark
double wall
of hill and cloud,
except to the west,
where one breach was bound
only by the horizon and the curling reach of a last futile cape.
The End of Nature
Today the wind cleared the beach of humans
though there were crowds of stranded crabs
and devalued sand dollars leaned against rotting coils of kelp
and everywhere opalescent shrapnel of battered armor.
Ravens kited a yard above the sand, bored, eyeing the selection of trash.
Sanderlings and willets were subdued but busy by the water’s edge,
heads down, working the curves of deep embayments torn by surf.
A couple of dog walkers with their beasts
one free spirit with a red sail on strings and a three-wheeled go-cart
exploiting the gale and the depopulated strand – that was the human factor.
And me, black-hooded, sucking wind and sand and grit of Asia’s palled cities
and salt leached out of the old planet, ears aching with cold.
A black freighter skated the dark horizon, bent for the Gate.
It seemed the edge of the world, but not, after all, its end,
despite the bears said to be drowning beyond that same horizon.
The wind today was too personal, the birds’ stabbing
for the fugitive life beneath the beach too intent.
And behind the dunes, the city, silenced by the gale,
for today at least too meek.
Toward Mission Bay
Out of the tunnel, into the dawn.
High above, the bridge,
untrafficked and old,
and fair weather clouds furling
like fresh sheets on a line.
Below, on the bay,
the black freighters doze.
The slope of water climbs away
to the sill of the world, where one
tall dark ship is perched.
Eight sails, lazy curves loose
and shivering in a light breeze.
She moves with leaden calm,
hull down with unseen cargo.
I have two fellow travelers today,
one coughing like an April bear,
the other squabbling on her cell.
Outside, no one; or no one
substantial. The tide is out,
the world strewn with shells
of piers and sagging houses.
Someone walked away
and left a drawbridge raised,
a turnstile open to the glare
off the bay, where the dark
ship still glides, backed by hills
that would be green in another light.
We three, though far from content,
stay glued to our seats:
the anxious little cult
of the living, rolling south
toward our personal stops.
Above us, a sky so high
the earth seems to ride low,
packed to the railings with
her ex-billions and burdened
with all the time in the world.
Native Planting
On red eroded dust
100 tiny green flags flapping
in a cold wind
their hundred wiry feet
jabbed in the heads
of 100 hopeful graves.
100 shivering witnesses
appealing to the past
100 fluttering prayers
flying up over the hilltop
and off to the west.
In the cold evening wind
100 solo hands clapping.
Surf
The Farallons today are a low
hulk adrift in hazy sun, half
below the world’s blue-black hump,
just one ship among the many
sliding down toward Asia.
Below this cliff the sea is
spangled with floating black
ninjas, their boards up-angled
like sharks’ jaws, waiting.
But this morning
all they do is wait.
From here I see
no rear and crash of surf
but just a slow fall
and rise. The surfers ride
that deep breathing
like well-fed babes,
too near sleep to try
the patience of this day.
Those Autumn Leaves...
Maybe guessing they don’t belong
cherry trees blush flame
in December. But one night’s rain
will send their leaves
to the street, and a breeze
soon sails them away.
Tannic shadows stain
where that radiance fell
on wet concrete; downslope
their borders fail and free
these thoughts to tail off
to nowhere.
Life History
The clouds are busy this workday,
commuting over bay and hills,
riding a wind they barely feel.
They look real, like pale flesh,
proud bellies solid
as the ridges they run.
But the air moves through them
as though nothing were there.
And they are nothing
but where a part of the sky cares
to show itself.
All day long
the clouds bulk and loom as though
the light were their own.
Sunset lends a final glow;
then they wither and die.
In the dark, unseen, the sky
continues on its way.
City Plane Trees
City dawn under a dirty
manmade cloud.
The wind clears its throat
dragging sheets of cardboard
over tainted streets.
A trolley groans
on a rising pitch
toward the dark hills
past bodies sprawled
in their own puddles
in random doorways
and casual middens.
Above it all
a haughty little moon.
So unlike the clean break
in desert country: the still
mountains topped with sun
pines silent and straight
feet deep in the pure pumice
of old extinctions.
But I will praise these
twisted city plane trees
condemned to concrete and
too tall for their sparse crowd
of desiccated leaves
that cackle in the dawn wind,
counting on some tomorrow.
Hawk Politics 2011
Never let them get above you
is the tribal lore.
Keep an eye turned to the sky.
But this day that started softly
now has a hard stare. White air
and dark needles in the corners
of my vision, and just below
my feet the rough branch
I can’t reach, and don’t need,
being firmly gripped. The harsh
intimacy of the natural
squeezing out my last few
difficult breaths. Crows, feigning
concern, bottom out in black
parabolas, and vanish
up into gray rolls of cloud,
over and over, screaming
their own agenda.
Why must this take so long?
This knowledge hung in the glare
waiting, as though there were
a proper moment to be eate
n.
Puffs of useless feathers
flutter down the wind.
I suppose we pigeons
should be grateful
just to be needed.
The Hero You Will Always Have With You
Even the wolverine can be discredited
if the dry season lasts too long.
Everywhere he looks
the hapless little snacks have holed up
and circumstances might even force him
to leave a foot or toe in some trap.
In the silence we may think he’s gone
or turned cuddly.
But he’ll be back
lifting like the low hull
of a long black ship
over the white horizon
behind him the trail of looted nests
torn meat and blots of red ink on snow
boarded windows vacant lots
curling tails of smoke
from burning cities.
And always the next
rosy-fingered dawn
in the quiet business district
before the morning rush.
His glittering gaze turning
this way and that.
Grocery Run
I had low hopes
for this routine stroll
whole wheat rolls
in a paper sack
but the wind surprised me
scrawling as always
its first thought
down Market Street
clatter of leaves
and the coverlet of fog
for once turned back
all the way to the hills
freed the sun to impose
its evening rules
on a clean vacant lot.
In This Economy
Construction interrupted,
raw excavations fill
with runoff, surprisingly pure.
For a time, sunlight ripples
on their sandy floors;
spores blow in from somewhere
and worlds are born.
In a few days they peak,
and flourish a few more:
green cultures occupy
warming seas, confidently
mutate, and then die
when the final drops
decamp and drift away.
After which, dust and sun,
a curling page of fossils
shadowed by idle cranes.
Street Tree
Our tree is always busy
buckling the pavement
and dropping deadfalls
on sidewalk and street.
I fear for its fate –
in our knotty age
patience is a thin bark,
easily breached.
But its high crown is a cloud
in dust green, never quite still,
a restless crowd browsing the sky.
And when I pass by before dawn,
in the dark, condemning the rain
or the street’s debris, I know the tree
will be there, whispering to itself,
and sometimes to a Cheshire moon,
of its own affairs:
the secret findings of its roots
and diversions of the air.
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