Facing Point Lobos

This morning the ocean shifted, then rose.

Waves I have watched strike my feet

now slap the cliff face twenty feet up,

tumble forward and climb with the tide

toward the cliff top and my squat shack

on a parcel of land Jeffers sold to my grandfather.

His tower hawks over my privacy, taunts

my solitude. Maybe the water will expand

and bury his stupid tower. Maybe the waves

will uncover Jeffers’ bones and wash

them into the unsettled sea, far away

from his tower and far below his beloved hawks.

I went out this morning to escape the human

world and found nature crueler, yet even in its fury

passive… lulling. I stayed to watch

one of his ospreys soar above, to circle but never dive.

Everything changes. Gods die. New ones birth themselves.

Ignorance begets ignorance.

Could a starving osprey learn to manipulate

rocks, and build a civilization of its own

on its own mountaintops?

Late afternoon approaches. The sun sits across

the ocean from me. I dangle my feet in the water.

The hawk doesn't circle anymore. He gave up.

Maybe the fish swim at lower depths now.

I line up pebbles and seashells placing them

outside the reach of the waves. I scoop

a dead starfish into the middle.

Poets lie, and philosophers teach them how.

Nietzsche killed God but lied about it.

I think that’s funny.

Once a red-tailed hawk brought a pebble across

the highway and dropped it at my feet.

I have felt that stone between my fingers,

rolled it in my palm, godhood entrancing me,

dancing in my hand like a tiny, lace-winged fairy.

Yeah, I know how Jeffers felt.

I take the stone from my pocket, and place

it onto the starfish. The sun falls beneath

the plane of the sea. I am content

watching the water envelop my shrine

to the hawk's end and the birth of his successor.

Tuscaloosa, AL 1997 & Birmingham, AL 2024