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.