i.
—& humans walked to the edge of the sand
through a bank of verbena & fog;
they thought they’d never get over
the deaths, but they were starting to. Worry
about money rested in their phones. Talk of
candidates had stalled. Some sang. Grays of
objects rested in their packs. They had come
to the edge with children or with friends. Big
nothing quieted the crows. Wings of dried ink.
The snake had gone back to the hills, to velvet &
the brian-grasses; it digested a mouse near its spine.
Some sang. The fox went back & would never
meet the snake except through the ampersand.
The memory of failure failed for an hour. Some
sang. The future was a cosmic particle
seen once a long time ago. Those who had tried
too often walked with those who had yet to try
as doubt can walk beside a radical hope—
ii.
some had cancer some walked outside
some were breaking up a few
were getting by some walked past
pines to their hearts’ desire thinking
of sex or seeds a few asked
where nature is bonnard-blue thistles
yarrow leaves narrowly out to sea
axio-fog of August down from bluffs
others rolled through dune grass some
rested depressed a few made sand-
cities sandwiches some went birdward
to sooty & long-billed murrelet grebe
iii.
—they had driven to the country, though as
a poet wrote The country will bring us no peace;
they took their children of light & flesh
because the sign was the sun upon the earth,
it was not toxic assets, it was not forwards or
options or swaps; the sign was not ruin upon
the sea, for the sea saved some. A caterpillar of
maybe it was the tiger moth inched along,
a few white bristles sticking up, bristles taller
than the country, & Abronia latifolia's roots would
not live past the country or the blue-eyed darner
& the meadow hawk with its three life stages…
By the sea the orbweaver rappelling beside
the fleabane was bolder than the country,
it didn’t see underlying leverage or hedging,
didn't see collateralized debt obligations & rates,
or see the probably 100 trillion traded on
what is called futures while the mountain lion that
has a small future took her young through the O in
October. Human children rolled through dune grass,
they had a simple laughter in the country, in sand
so much older than the country, they had a little
gladness for that day while the sign, the shadow
of death, passed over them but death did not—
iv.
little litter on the littoral shore
where first peoples set tule boats
walkers makers of a burn tangle
left that ocean before writing nations
whose words are lost thick low
mats now named beachweed or heliotrope
horned sea rocket When John Muir
a sweeping man settled farther inland
that family farmer grew peach trees
o ever now after such sorrow
we dreamed a red ladder of
birth & death being set down
v.
The sun paused. It was greeting the soul
of the day. The clouds gathered past money,
they were cumuli- & cirri-, they were glauc-
& grise & gray. The friends talked
with their thumbs on the tiny machines
& some walked or drank & some loved.
On the mountain in summer
they had seen serpentine & saw it again
today, black green not the color of money
as if a serpent had slid beneath the birth
of the sea & brought the burned
waves to the rock. The friends
had violence in them & they had
silence too. By the waves the silence
sounded like swswswswsw or ____ ,
it sounded like ''''''''' or even {{{{{.
Lichen hung in hashtags & the wind
was braver than sports. Slowly they
forgot the grief opening of the book
& when they saw the secret serpentine
they knew what could be both you
& not you, that snake & fox &
word would live with the hooded,
the ring-necked, the marbled, the blue—
vi.
Otters swam in the lagoon,
the gates opened in the reeds,
no suffering between the myths or
silver smelt diminishing. No metal or
spilled oil where human hair had been
used to gather it… Otters have one million
little hairs per inch of skin so when
between the reeds they passed they did not
hurt with cold. Far out to sea 10,000 whales
swam without the humans.
The humans breathed when they saw them
not as dire. Liso- & lati- & beside. They stood
in Abronia latifolia, cries of E or I when they
saw the whales. Harbingers, Thoreau might
have said. One tall boy named Finn saw three.
There was aggression among large mammals
but no merrill lynching, no goldman saching,
no bankers’ greed or quantitative easing
no negative interest rate environment
yielding minus zero so students pay to be
in debt. There was none of that. Some willow
buds bobbed in the lagoon, kelp bobbed
between gray & brown otters’ heads in winter
cress. Their happiness was research.
vii.
The humans had come in strong boats
when continents were closer.
That is the theory in some accounts.
The continents floated in & suddenly
naked-new bodies arrived in buckled dunes & radiating
grasses. When some made love in the wooden place
by the sea in autumn her hands were
always cold even in thick warm
fibers & out in the charismatic dusk,
under the harvest moon set in the history of
arrivals, in browns & gray of winter fog &
maybe in the amount of time
it took for the in- side of them to become
warm, jazz poured in as if from distant fires on
the west shore, as if in animated orange code. Centuries
passed. When sex was delicious one woman thought, here we are
at a national seashore, almost nothing goes well for the nation
but land held in common past dominance & greed
which seemed like a real plan as if love were free
viii.
& heard the reeds hissing when
Drake stepped on land creeks went
below the new dead in slim
fog could not be comforted
dusky Chlorogalum pomeridianum the "soap plant"
blooms on dry hillsides white-crowns nearby
cloudy light flowers wiry blue lines
Miwok dug up hidden bulbs used
dye from leaves for tattoos used
raw bulbs for lather from cooked
bulbs made a sweet starch then
with the paste they glued arrows
ix.
In spring, when the field starts to think & the invisibles
are relaxed, sounds let themselves out to the left. Crows
& apples sanction their appeal & humans go out
almost to the Point & see the baby elk that have
have fuzzy fur on the horns, grasses through which other
grasses push. Yellow mustard flowers like paintings in
Europe. The elk are standing out at the precipice
past dread or Thursdays & the humans start to feel
pleasure. Some humans don't want elk on their land
& put up signs with poems: LET'S PROTECT/
BOTH ELK AND COW/ TIME TO BUILD / ELK FENCES NOW.
Humans want to have sex anytime they want but don't want
the elk to have sex anytime & accuse male elk of
drinking water before sex, even humans who might
take property from humans in other countries think
male elk are being unreasonable for drinking water,
but the humans love beauty & can be released from
their positions because so many have doubts about
doubts about what is called the natural world; far below,
the sea lions are stretched out like rug samples,
& the humans tarry, looking down at high waves crashing,
green with its leader into gray, crashing over what is lost;
the humans name what is lost while going home where
they live in violence & hope & inconceivable longing—
x.
In woods where the spirits stood
among the signs past usnea hanging
in wet bishop pines humans heard
the loud instances of wide hawk
A red-tail flew over them
E-E-E & the anti-going furred one
crawled past brown feet of chanterelles
waited while one of the hawk's
perfect E's flew to the sky
& found the end of time
xi.
They had come to the coast as they
had come to songs as they had come
to poetry. When they were odd
children they went to the sea & saw
the bronze stems in the sand, dune grass
where the shaman starved & hurt sank
quietly. The parents were anxious, so
the children tried to act normal to keep them
calm. They didn’t know about threatened
corals or the sorrow of coastal towns.
The children tried to act normal in school
when teachers brought packets of poetry.
On holidays, violent games with the cousins
& the sea grew more toxic &
more lovely. Now they are grown, they’re
trying to feel a little less terrible
about everything. They might take a poem
to the beach for a birthday or a wedding.
Pelicans fly in their backward Zs. Sand
is the residue of stars, edges echo eco
eco, for the house is already beside itself,
the edges not the center; the children
laugh as they make the sand houses, not
remembering they’ll remember —
xii.
So it was that the dream went back past the signs
So it was in summer again the loved ones went out to
the sea at a quarter to dusk
The part of them that could do nothing did nothing
& the light of them walked along
Walked west forgetting not the horror but forgiving
others who were happier & the amount
When they got to the waves they gave the ashes of
the dead to the sea oh blankness cut loose
from the dream
& forgot for an hour the anger as they sat & shook
the small stones from their shoes & walked
back over the bridge of fireweed
Talking about events that mattered as the ashes were
sucked back in the tide so loss could be lost
for a while as love kept them
in company beside —
for the children & grandchildren of the seashores
