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

Stumblebumming 

LetterPoem to Linda Gracen

my last morning in Mendocino 

red rose petals scattered through 

a Cyprus grove on the headlands

velvety bright surprise, like finding you again

at Ten Mile, perched above white water

a vista as spectacular as your smile 

and the amazing capacity of your heart 

that cradles the walking wounded 

their stumblebum migration to mental health

not unlike my own return each year 

to my abandoned heart, all those 

still beating along the coast that speak to me 

of braver choices than my own

even the glazed-eyed highway walker 

pad-padding to and fro in her flip-flops

relentless in her unfathomable quest

and dusty Spencer in decade-old dreadlocks 

forever hitching rides between Mendocino 

and Fort Bragg, and I wonder what if I’d stayed

what if I returned, what if I rediscovered

the rhythm of a heart not lost but merely 

misplaced like our friendship along the 

many miles I’ve traveled away and back again 

always yearning for what gets left behind 

on this meandering trail going no place much 

after all

for LaRue

Sometimes a fair wind 

will send things right again

like me finding you

right there in Noyo Harbor

on the tethered Queen among 

the gently tipping masts

old friendship renewed

in an even older boat

a sunken treasure salvaged 

the way life sometimes allows 

when something worthy resurfaces

a scuttled boat

a misplaced friendship

an ocean of possibilities

 a sleeping fisherman drifts 

down the Mendocino coast to be

battered awake in a nest of rocks

grateful to have landed only

one town south in a boat 

that will carry him no farther

like foolhardy lovers riding currents

beyond their notice or control 

oblivious to the pending wreckage

of an ill-charted course

so much depending 

on the random blessings

of an indifferent sea