THE OCEAN
has always
spoken to me
sometimes just blue
sharp as a thorn
and sometimes cold
like a human
and down
from the sea cliff
there are no strangers
to her sound
all animals
know
waves
dance their way
to the shore
in shouts
at high tide
and dreamlike at low
when night comes in
its darkening face
climbs the horizon
and the poor bones
of driftwood
wait to rise as peaceful
smoke from a fire ring
to a heaven
trailing
like a veil
between us
—from Rattle #21, Summer 2004
_________
Gordon Preston: “At a writing workshop, Gerald Haslem stated ‘places write your poems’ and, though I have lived for 24 years in my wife’s hometown of Modest, in California’s great Central Valley, it is the ocean, our Pacific, that speaks to me, to us, having graced every pocket beach from Marin’s Red Rock to SLO’s Pirate’s Cove.”
