Juxtaposition
Silver-blue waves
leap, as fires roar
shoreward, each fall,
almost on cue.
Summer lingers
as hardscrabble sage
and dry chaparral
tinder autumn-
dry hills
I've known
witches winds
ferociously
brooming
Octobered
landscape.
I'd often come
home about now,
to remember
and savor.
I'd wind along
storied coastline,
breathtaking landscapes
post-carded backward
across time.
Births of
our daughters,
a Mission Bay
honeymoon,
prom-dancing
the evening
in Pacific Palisades.
Summers spent
surfside,
child play
at Zuma, where
toes first touch
shivering Pacific.
Up and down the
coast, I became
who I am
--feeling
and breathing
California.
I learned to
point-counterpoint
atop Playa Del Ray.
As we pondered
Camus on
fog shrouded
hillside, high
above Point Vicente
lighthouse,
life beckoned,
horizon opened up
so wide the sand
and the waves
still feed my
spirit and strength,
that of
my husband of
forty-some
years, and children,
who are who they are,
in part, because
of these places
I both love,and miss.
Now I hear
towns and beach
cities in headlines
Encinitas, San Marcos,
San Diego,
where I dreamt of
visiting just last week.
Lake Arrowhead,
Temecula, Malibu,
One, then another,
And twenty?
The nightmare unfolds
nature and not-nature,
Photoshopping
landscape of
precious detail.