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of the tree where I left it, and you,

      walking ahead of me, silent and still as a pond,

      into which everything sinks.

       2

      Cliffs and coves are also gold, sandstone shaped

      by oceanic motion. Tides and storms

      carve the heaviest spaces of earth.

      Rock shifts, sanddrifts mound or cave into

      new rock pools, sea anemones open and close,

      all life undulates fragility.

      You find unfastened a purple-red starfish

      washing in the tidal slip and lift it up for me.

      Ink-red patterns in relief on its spiny back,

      hieroglyphs, ancient inscriptions I decipher—lambda, lambda, lambda—

      strings of Greek syllables I would sing for you

      in an optative mood.

       3

      I have not loved you in all seasons, only this one,

      summer turning gold into autumn

      and the California coast stretches long as usual in a mist,

      longer in a bright day like this one, water unfurling

      like silk along chalk cliffs, sky and sea lapis,

      a white edge curled farther North like fur.

      Every line in the landscape is hard with clarity

      and whatever this is

      is hard with clarity.

      Teach me. Tell me. I am listening

      like a morning bird of the marshes

      hidden among dry brown grasses.

      You cannot see me loving you.

       4

      Several miles up San Gregorio Road

      the strawberry man can’t read your T-shirt:

      Fly fishing on the Rogue, you say.

      Wild fishing, he says.

      He counts coins in your hand,

      his own hands small, root-gnarled, pig-knuckled.

      We exchange looks as we walk

      from the tin shed into

      blue-big sky. Your hands dribble water from a green bottle

      to clean the berries.

      He’s watching us,

      a scruple in his eye, a baffled or knowing

      wonderment. I can’t say which.

      By the sea again, heading south toward Pescadero,

      I pass you a large red bead of a berry by the stem.

      Stem and all, all at once

      you take it in your mouth

      from my fingers. I don’t know if I know what I mean

      or if you do.

      In a fog of yellow dust, I see again

      the farm-grimed fingers of the knot-tight little man who,

      from the grease-black engine of his truck,

      looked up and touched

      the tip of his hat.

       5

      I’m being silly on our walk up the beach.

      A dry stalk of kelp my baseball bat, and here’s a baseball,

      one flap undone, wet and wobbly in white air,

      and a light bulb from a yacht offshore brassy in my mouth.

      You take a photograph of me, with bulb, with ball, with bat,

      ready to strike. Me on the beach at Pescadero,

      I’m throwing the ball up for your photograph

      to remember me.

       6

      I kneel by a tidal pool to unfasten a starfish,

      points curled round the ragged end of black rock.

      I claw at its edges. Water ripples light

      around my cold fingers, prying the starfish,

      Nothing loosens. The nail rips.

      I suck thin blood clean from the wound

      and see the starfish in my watery shadow,

      its purple-red like the purple-red of our starfish,

      but alive with a wild tenacity. It won’t let go

      and will not float like the dead into my hand.

      We will come again, you say, to Pescadero

      and colors of the sea will be different,

      new animals in old rock pools, seawinds pushing our hair.

      Something like knowledge washes over us like a wave.

       The Whale

      Somewhere out there you are walking; maybe you’ve gotten

      as far as the beach and taken off your shoes or pulled

      binoculars from your pack to see a bird better, or a boat,

      or the island of seals. And you’ve wondered by now, as I do,

      will they be there forever, the beach, the birds, the seals,

      figures, you among them, dear friend, of this landscape

      I see from my window, a frame on a changeable weather,

      everything, not just the tide, in flux, faraway but soon.

      And what if you’ve paddled your kayak into big winds

      beyond easy waves of the harbor? What if you’ve taken on

      sea chop, its wild unknowable currents and swells?

      A whale cruising for krill might graze your hull,

      tip it. What I honor is your brave imagination, not that

      you play it safe: you know you don’t know what’s possible.

       Glaciers

       Alaska

      We had a picnic by the glacier, its shear wall

      close on the other side of the narrow river.

      Just looking at its face made us colder.

      Its ice not smooth, tall dribbled peaks,

      frozen stalagmites, white with veins

      of dirty gray and streaks of cobalt blue

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