Mendocino Poems

but I have peeled an avocado with a spoon 

in Mendocino where every year the whales 

pass by, south to spawn, and later

bring their calves back north 

to waves of delight from tourists

and locals alike 

a languid parade 

of misty vapor blows, big and small

their backs glistening in the sun

or charcoal boulders in the fog

it’s possible to believe

they know we are watching 

longing to reach out, our fingers 

gliding along their quivering flesh

sensing our own watery beginnings

the way love can delight and

reveal us to ourselves

even when passing through 

to warmer or cooler climes

while perhaps you peel an avocado

with a spoon in Mendocino

and dream of a farm in Africa 

where you might have found 

your truest self

once upon a time

in a workshop in the land 

of redwoods and cool pine air 

he caresses the possibilities

of what might emerge

from the wood before him 

on the bench are knives, rasps

a mallet—deceptively heavy

because divining what has been 

long-buried is not light work

a laying on of hands and a long 

calculated cut begins the winter 

sculpting, smoothing and slicing

toward a vision of what awaits

the shape that draws him to it

on a train that slices through snow

tall buildings of concrete and steel

she fills a poem with wood smoke

the scent of pine, the way the sky 

reflects a silver ocean when 

the world turns upside down 

in a circle of Cyprus on the headlands

a hollow of tangled limbs 

sprawling vistas

beneath his searching hands 

her reflective images

the long-buried possibilities 

of their imaginings 

taking shape