Brown Pelicans
Huntington Beach Wetlands
They hover outside the sanctuary,
Between sand and sea—
Prayers when flying or floating,
Moving in waves, a hymn when fishing
By full moon’s light. Each leaves its place
In formation to dive for glittering scales
That catch its attention. It scoops
All of the school it can to fill
Its pouch, bows its head to drain away
Sea water, tosses back its head
To swallow the sacrament. They share
The shoreline, sometimes wrapped in fog,
In silence. To give voice would give away
Their presence while they hunt.
On rocky islands not too far from shore,
They breed in colonies. They speak only
In congregations—
Grunt and cackle,
Gurgle and chortle,
While they waddle
Uncertainly over rocks and sands.
Flaneur at the Beach
Sand yields to the weight of my feet.
Dry it swallows them.
Wet it caresses. Under cool breezes
I crave its radiance captured
From the sun. Under noon day sun
I seek surfaces cooled by waves.
Sand travels with me. Rocks worn
Through millennia by wave and water,
Each of them playing its own song,
Each with its own chorus,
Neither willing to be bothered with words.
Even sea foam is not silent.
Shells travel with me, rattling in a shoe,
Each of them no longer sheltering life,
Some still whole, others worn in waves
Or broken on rocks, each chosen for
Its shape, color or feel, even the broken
Treasured.
Scavenger
The drive to Stinson Beach is a long one,
a single road winds its way over the ridge—
through redwoods, along mountain curves.
Today there’s no stopping at Muir Woods.
I pass the sharp turnoff down to Slide Ranch.
In the distance it offers fields where rains
reach a resting place. Farmers know the value
of bottom lands. I’m not in search of produce.
I’m in search of sand dunes and waves,
the silence of memory— a little too distant,
a little too foggy, empty of weekend crowds.
I let clouds move between me and the sun.
My harvest: a few shells that no longer shelter
life, a scattering of pine cones from trees
along the periphery of my downcast vision.
I wonder if I’ll ever be wise enough to leave
them to the ministries of tides and fire.
Opposing Forces
This was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.
Alas, the summer’s energy wanes quickly,
A moment and it is gone. . . .
–“Soonest Mended,” John Ashbery
our ambition was to run along the beach
while flying a layer of plastic stretched across a frame
god only knows where the kite came from
my memory flashes on the trunk of his car and a package
perhaps a gift meant for his nieces and nephews
and thus in middle-age I failed to learn how to fly
crashing into someone’s sandy picnic
my rushed apology then another attempt to discover
an updraft as easily as the seagulls did
lift was missing from my tenuous definition of fun
it needed that component of total aerodynamic force acting
on a foil perpendicular to the wind that opposes
the pull of gravity to make me real
sun was not enough
wind was not enough
ocean foam tickling my toes was not enough
His Tutor
For Danny
Instead of hitting the books,
they hit the beach. He clambers
over wave-washed boulders.
She follows. The gap he jumps
across, she tries and slips.
Trina Gaynon's poems recently appeared in Poetry East, Presence, New Verse News, Tomahawk Creek Review, and Clepsydra. More can be found in Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, other anthologies, numerous journals, and a chapbook An Alphabet of Romance from Finishing Line. She received an MFA in Creative Writing at University of San Francisco. A past volunteer for literacy programs in local libraries and WriteGirl in Los Angeles, she currently leads a group of poetry readers at the Senior Studies Institute in Portland. Her book Quince, Rose, Grace of God is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. https://www.amusebouche-poetry.com/
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