On Seams, Sonnets, and Leaving

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.“ Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymus Bosch

This place has curled me at the edges-
left me leaf-like and paper thin on darkened
passageways of cathedral trees.
My breath escaped the wind through
pipes of hollow trunks, melodical.

Why does distance from these caving cliffs push
tides of your leaving past my bones
with such precision?

Past the driving rain, the rib-chime sky,
and the white arrowhead of Pico Blanco.
What else could tuck me so
neatly backwards into our cabin bed?

Clanking glasses, that word you loved,
your closet filled with shirts. Yesterday, I collected
chips of wood sloughed off our front porch
under your shoes, forgotten.

I’ve counted mornings.
More nights than the ones we spent together.
Watched whisky drip slowly by the fire
into the casserole dish, swilled over the memory
of your hand racing at the seam of my dress.

Pink nipples, the blue vein of exposed rock.
A kiss that begs you to unlatch the hooks
that bind my body to the world, so we may live
again among roots,
carving sonnets on the bark.

Rocky Creek Landslide

I taught myself to cook from a library book

the week we watched the cliff road slide into the ocean.

Deviled eggs, first. Their soft white insides perverted

with paprika, you laughed at my mayonnaise hands.



The week we watched the cliff road slide into the ocean,

March rain spit in your face at the generator.

It pooled around my fingers, muddy digging for potatoes

in a Big Sur garden planted soon enough before the storm.



Leaves hung heavy with sodden sky at

the grange hall where someone told us

convicts built our impossible road.



Hooked backs hanging in the salted air, their

granite muscles nailed to wooden cribbage.

“Foundations,” you said, for so many leavings.



Convicts together ironed under the majesty of this place

Laying asphalt across roads they never traveled.



We move this thought around on our tongues,

tines of forks pressing well-fed lips,

scraping left overs from our plates to

the onion earth of our compost pile.



We walk slowly through pools of fresh water,

searching down the road

for the silver lights of the construction zone.

And there, beyond the redwoods,

we hear the wind men

skipping rocks across the divide.