My Big Sur

1

Where sleeps the Trixter who carved this sacred land;
He, who clawed the deep canyons
beneath the spindrift waves
And scooped up the Pacific floor
to pile on the Santa Lucia peaks?
As beads of sweat shine on a forehead,
The cliffs of Pico Blanco sparkle in the sun.
In his slumbers when HE tosses we shake in fear.
Above ruddy manzanita and chaparral scrub,
Over deer-grass and dusty sagebrush,
Where poppies glint like ore
And lupine flash then fade,
Beneath the honking harlequin
And the sun stirred monarchs,
The rising haze vanishes.
The ocean drizzle disappears.
As sweat glistens down an arm pit,
The thickets collects the dew from the mist.
What snow may fall on the mountain slopes
On perching cypress and red berried madrone
on crags of twirling fir and pungent pine,
Melts down dells where still redwoods sip the fog,
And divides into the Surs, Little and Big,
To race down hillsides of sprawling laurel,
Where hovering hawks and owls spy field mice,
The downy woodpeckers pound for beetles,
Where mountain lions stalk the deer
And yapping coyotes chase wild hare
And the live oaks stretch branch to branch.
As lashes hide the sleep in the gully of an eye,
The leafmeal and needles gather ‘neath ferns.

.
Down river beds to lagoons the salmon commute,
Down ravines to marshes the stickleback swarm,
Where spray and surf pound the beach sand
And foam and froth stir the tide pools.
Here sea lions bark and bask
And otters pry mussels and abalone
And kelp forests sway with the current
And algae bloom red and green and brown,
Above the alley of sharks
And the boulevard of whales.
As pink and pale as the nail of a finger,
The secret sides of the shells are revealed.

With every step I glance down in case
Left lost on a high out crop or
Exposed by the tides in the mud of a creek
I find an arrowhead.

2

Once the Esselen filled
baskets with berries and acorns.
Once the Ohlone made boats
of tule with lines and nets.
They had their wars;
They dumped their waste,
But they lived on not out of the land
They made peace with the elk
and the bear they killed.

Like Cabrillo and Drake
I want to survey your form.
Like Portola and Father Serra
I seek to possess your soul.
Like Pfeiffer and Figueroa
I lust to own you.

As if I could map the waves;
As if I could fence the skies.
Who am I to clip a lock from your head?
It is my desire I must conquer.

3

You nap now in your splendor
and know me not,
You sleep in stillness
ever quick to quake.
Arise and except my devotion.

Like an arrow
you pierce my heart with your gaze.
With my tears I ache to erode your brow.
I long to tongue the crease of your chin,
The stubble on the crest of your cheek.
I yearn to nuzzle your walnut nipples.

Pray let me I touch with my breath
The root hard knot of your ankle,
The hollow dent of your breast bone,
The milkweed down of your ass cheeks,
The bracken in the gorge of your butt.

Deny not my eyes
The river bed wrinkles of your scrotum,
The shaded, shy burrow of your anus,
The oak cap of your foreskin,
The burl root of your shaft.

Stretch out your wings to embrace me.
Like a hovering hawk,
Like a soaring condor,
By my neck lift me up in your bite.