Poems from Baja 2019
24 November
“Outboard Engine”
Click
Pump
Choke
Pull
Rev
Choke in
The smell of burning gasoline
The vibration of wood on water.
We are in Mexico
testing out our back-up outboards.
I am grown
but my entire body tells me
I am 13
flying across the creek,
out the river mouth into the channel.
My dad would have been so proud.
He still is
I just can’t hear it right now.
Everytime I think of him
My heart breaks a little more.
I am not a little kid asleep on the engine box anymore.
He is not the steady hands carrying my down the dock
into the car
on late summer nights.
26 November
How would it feel
To feel whole?
Or steadfast?
Or sure?
I wonder this
As I search a pile of tiny shells
For purple sea urchin spines.
These delicate little remnants
Of a strange, spiky creature
Are my favorite.
In this moment
That is all I am sure of.
Sea urchin spines are my favorite.
I wonder what it would be like
To say I love you to someone
With no doubt or fear
That that is what you meant.
Or how it would feel
To want something with your whole body
And to know
That that course alone was true?
I find another spine
And tuck it into my sock.
How would it feel to let go?
To heal so deeply
That the skin is smooth and new?
I know none of these things
And I feel a lost sadness
Well up in me
As I wander desperately
Along the beach.
Is my search for sea urchin spines
A distraction?
Or is it,
In fact,
How I will arrive
To a life of meaning?
5 december
I walk along the edge
Where the ocean calms
And flows into fluttering lace across the sand.
I am walking east,
Watching the sun surge up among last night’s rain clouds.
I am walking slow.
Moving slow.
But soon the beach changes.
My feet meet new pebbles.
These ones are bigger
They shift under my bare toes.
They hurt
I stumble.
I am walking too fast.
I slow my pace even more.
I am reminded that slow now
Might be fast later.
I think of my lover
Who speaks in seconds
“Turn off the lights and hurry back,
I do not want to miss you,” he whispers.
I have been gone a month
I wonder if it has gone by
Fast or slow for him.
Or if he has forgotten our time
Just as I do
When I walk east in the morning.
