Luther Allen squalicum beach

Vol. 12 No. 2

POETRY

Luther Allen

squalicum beach

march 2

it is spring here grey and green only the second we have seen in the northwest.

last night i talked to the buyer of our place in colorado. there is still snow on the ground it's been a rough winter and they are selling the house.

after work i walk on squalicum beach. a young woman the long pier glistering straw hair low tide enticing in her sunset solitude the water and sky abyssing out to greyness somewhere past seattle and she smiles as i go past.

down the beach stones smooth as the cheek of a young girl nestled, rooted in the saltgrit. running, loping in the fading light til the blood begins to surge the heart hurts and then heals the shins begin to splint...

as happens more quickly now as i soften and droop and grow more brittle with age more bitter/sentimental, aware/dull cynical, despondent, and hopeful patient/restless secure/insecure and perfect in my inconsistencies.

waiting is not mere empty hoping -it is an inner certainty — i ching on the trestle (no, i’m sure that here it’s called a pier) running a rusty pipe far into the bay large unnamed birds, settled wings cocked to the coming stars hundreds, eyeing the blood orb softening into the murk. they ignore me.

and i am pleased by that. and pleased by the vision -- a premonition i easily settle into -of a hundred years hence when our ilk and our ways have self-destructed leaving the rest of life in peace. just like this. but without us.

beyond, the shore stretches a panicked pavement of rock more wreckage of old bellingham. the whooshing of determined current giving the illusion of movement to an anchored post.

i have little urge to go farther. the rest looks much the same and there is enough here for a long time

and besides it is darkening as the earth pulls me away into the black.

a patch of fresh water in last light oozed from some timeless seep trapped beautifully amongst the boulders in its pregnant sterility.

73

74

CIRQUE

i jog back, easier now to be greeted by huffing young men even later than i am smartly dressed and pushing themselves bringing their dogs down to shit on the beach.

the long pier is empty of the woman. i remember how it is now in colorado: the drab worn colors, mud beneath the snow cold, yet dustless winds only small peeps of green.

i turn up the ravine toward home flood into the warm and chill of this delicious spring this green jumble of blackberry, salal, and vine maple spy the first skinny slug of the year and find something between a thought and a feeling:

perhaps it would be ok in a hundred years if the great-grandsons and great-granddaughters of my friends were here

cultivating steaming mussels singing songs with the salmon the ravens the sea the scudding clouds

Fallen Lucy Tyrrell