Crossing Over

Sun-dappled redwood mist bandtails flush, wrentits call through fiery green walls.Chattering hikers returning from the still-inaudible seablindly pass a doe in the ferns. Back at the dockeagle-eyed Auduboners blew through like a bushtit swarmracking up species, the kind of birding you hate missing the loon surfacing behind the pier the wandering tattler around the cove bend the ones you had to wait for.At Wildcat Beach, cliff-edge tent in flame-guttering wind up the beach, a driftwood fire. Lone gull rides the horizon fox family darting around.Sleep, rest sore feet, but who can say it's over?Beyond us out there, the impossible other shore.Behind us the catastrophe of immortalitythat drove us to the little horrors we emit like octopus ink. Mystery gave out then the wine and mushrooms. Sex gave out, then chastity, then property and oil all the achievements, all the accumulation all the lists, all the games, all the service and finally chatter too.End of the line now, but who can say it's over?From here to Japan, only ocean bridged by whale causeways myriad jeweled droplets each its own universe.Lighthouse winking out there, and tanker lights. Cliff grass rippling a little more gently now in the night wind.In the morning, whimbrel in the silent surf harbor seal watching offshore and raccoons have stolen our bread baby claws prying through lockbox cracks but who can say it's over?Well, you do, more or less—Sunday responsibilities uneasy scent I remember.But first, around Wildcat Lake birdsong-throbbing thickets in August heat siren song reminding us that everything is made of sex: hand and eye deer, raccoonwillet, godwit, pintail, warbler. fern, willow, kelp— rock and water, too?And what's sex made of?Noonday slog back up the red-baked fire road sweating out body and mind. Jay's feather, so blue “Don't pick it up.”Molten elements, last seaward glance from the ridge.It hasn't solidified yet. Sunlight subsides to luminous shade. Scent mosaic poison oak backlit as if from withinwrentits still scuffling immersed in hidden bird paths silky soft air.Could you believe it's always been like this . . . You've gone ahead. Go ahead on.I'll just sit down here and watch the poison oak change color a little longer. Where are you going, little Buddha off to save the world?Why not sit down with me here and save it that way? Who knows what might happen if we wait long enough.But no. Not your show Don't you know you can save the whole world and lose your soul?But that's the risk we've run since time began.So go, walk with the immunity of God's ministers the gunshot-riddled streets of Anacostia, Capitol HeightsGet it down on tape and send it back to remind us what horror's made of. And when you find them and take them over the bridge that doesn't exist anymorejust tell them, tell herif you have to tell anyone anything that it hasn't solidified yet—the light, I mean— and it isn't over.