HOUSE BY THE SEA, PT. BONITA

HOUSE BY THE SEA, PT. BONITA
     From paintings by El Meyer & Gail Packer
      Heredity is nothing more than stored environment.
           —Luther Burbank

For years, the Farallones hid the mouth of the Golden Gate
from explorers bearing glass beads and small gifts of death.
The Ohlones & Miwoks thought sailing ships were white birds
rising from the bottom of the sea. So ended
ten thousand years of dancing on the brink of the world.
A carnelian tooth chews on the miniscus of the horizon.
Clouds roil and twist like whitecaps or forgotten dreams
of cypresses testing the boundaries of air.
Redwing blackbirds whistle drills in the cattails
as limed buildings edge nervously into morning.
Ghosts inhabit sheets left out overnight on the clothesline
and the grape squeezes life from red franciscan strata.
An army of geese guard the dark continent.
Steam shimmers on the mirrored beach. Rare shells.
It's a matter of degree whether faith creates
experience, the padres shrugged as Indians died
of the common cold and smallpox. And for miles
the ground was littered with their bones.

7/89

1992 So We Might See in the Desert, CPITS anthology
1990 Poet News/ Sacramento Poetry Review
1989 Green Fuse
1984 California State Poetry Society, First Prize, and Dec. 1994 "Best of the Best" published poems