Inaccessable Areas Exist

An abalone in a pail,

Large and lonely and muted,

Sits in a galvanized jail. While

Its own mortared shell, gray-hued,

Hides delirious light:

Amassed motes

From years of labor

Imbued iridescent.

Now hauled from home,

Sublittoral,

By an eager boy who works up the slope,

Bright and whistling

Through the serpentine,

The outcrops above the ocean

Where the Mendocino cypress barely cling,

Closed-coned and bending.

A flycatcher lifts and flits,

Startled,

With a quick trilling cry.

So small and then gone

To redwoods high.

Oh, gray-green passerine,

Take me with you

On your little barred wings~~

While in rooms below,

Counterpaned in black and white

Of the new night,

Ruby slippers gleam,

Lustrous sheets glacier up,

then flow.

Inaccessable Areas Exist

INACCESSIBLE AREAS EXIST



I feel the pull of the lowering call

As the tide comes and the fog fills in.

The verdant bloom,

The coral orange and pinks of sky and land

Now blanketed with grey flannel

That wools over unfolded

From the cedar chest

As summer ebbs.



An abalone in a pail

So large and lonely and muted

In its galvanized prison.

Years of tiles labored on.

Bricks mortared up in ardent diligence

Hiding the iridescent glory,

Heaven's own light.

Hauled from its home

Sublittoral

By an eager boy who works up the slope

Bright and whistling

Through the serpentine,

The outcrops above the ocean

Where the Mendocino cypress barely cling,

Closed-coned and bending.



A flycatcher lifts and flits

Startled

With a quick trilling cry.

So small and then gone

To redwoods high.

Oh, grey-green passerine

Take me with you

On your little barred wings~~

While in rooms below

Buried in the black and white of night,

Ruby slippers gleam

And lustrous sheets glacier up,

Then lushly flow.




~~~~~~~~~