I. Crossing San Andreas

Who feels the earth an indifferent mass
Stranger to the pains of bones and eyes
Will find here that with each leg on
Limbs so slow the trees walk back and forth
The thread from that sharp spool run out
For miles wrapped in time's body centuries deep:
Body of bodies, here in the wind.

Eyes that earned their keep by saying
How the jaguar waits, how the tinamou runs,
How a woman's glance is moved by love
Cannot help but see a different hand
In these hills, an older gentler genius
Walking the fragment of a foundered kingdom
Held but not consumed, not comprehended
Symbol, waiting to be completed.

The birds maintain that nothing is changed
Ruffle their old, old, brown feathers
Disputing ownership, sovereignty, and love
But follow the creeping, skipping gnomon
North, into the colder air, until redwoods
Send up their masts, their ship-rigged cathedrals
And love by then, where it must, has changed them.

II. Abbott’s Lagoon

My praise is a list: all that is beautiful
Is mine. Where I have walked
The light spoke, the air cried out,
Words sprang forth in yellow poppies,
My thoughts were winged and floated on the deep.
Dust of my arms, lie mingled with
The flesh of the sun-stained earth,
Dust of my lips, speak to the giving breath,
Number the sands in love, put on each leaf
Your greedy sign. I have fed
On the ravelled strand, I have suffered
These shapes, to hear my own
Raising its voice in praise to you.

(cdm | BirdsOfPointReyes)