What beautiful birds outside,

discussing god . . . —Luis Omar Salinas

Late afternoon leaning back amid coral and tamarisk trees, I’m breathing for all

I’m worth beside bush sparrows and the usual congregation of crows faithful in their work appraising wind . . . all of us a bit bemused before the sea that looks as intractable as ever,

and, who knows, may be finished with us before very long? Spending another afternoon

thinking about it, I realize it’s time I won’t get back—then again, we never get any

time back, no matter how long a memory lasts. . . .

Even so, I’m remembering Omar, writing those lines, on his back porch in Sanger, admiring the house finches in his avocado tree. And I think of Ungaretti, though I

have no idea where he was when he wrote that he was “lit with immensity” . . . it might

have been some swallows banking on the air at dusk, or later, perhaps the stars breathing out

their light that had him feeling like that? Either way, I have to wonder—the gods having

shown so little mercy thus far. . . .

I reach into my bag for the split of Pinot Noir, pour a cup and savor a first fruit-

forward sip, and for a minute take part in a little inconclusive joy just sitting on this bench,

twilight coming on and humming out there over the outline of the island of Santa Cruz. . . .

I think of my lost compadres Peter and Jon, afternoons and evenings spent in the untethered

delight of our own company over a glass to two.

I hold my hands up against the sky and want to believe this is not it, not all there is

to come? I take another stab at making sense of things in my notebook—ay caramba,

either way, it was fun as it flashed by. . . . Who in the world were we all the way back

there, dusty, and happy along these paths, children with our shining minds? Those of us

still vertical on the planet have to wonder what happened to our bodies, our souls, the ones

left behind like laundry drying on line. It seems we soften like figs, then each morning in

the mirror look as if we’re drying up?

On that subject, no rain for years—my shirt sleeves whip in the hot Santa Ana winds,

and like the eucalyptus, I’m a bit wobbly, exposed as I walk along the cliff where I recall Hernandez warning of that tree of impossible things, most every branch of which I tried to

climb, beginning with philosophy in my teens and 20s, only to understand that I didn’t have

much to say, but went on saying it anyway despite never envisioning my heart as a frozen

orange, a crown of flames. Yet there might be something to that image of the soul layered

like an onion . . . yet nothing at the center when you get there. . . .

The seeds in our feeder have run out, I listen to the spice finches and our wren

complain to their god, who, it’s been argued, is ours as well . . . shoulder-in friends,

place your bets. . . . Light’s slipping away, burnished, gold as sun-burnt blossoms

of mimosa. Pomegranates—the philosophers’ fruit—hang cracked and dry on the branches;

half a dozen outcomes regarding death and impossibility coming up again. And if

there are eternal ideas doesn’t it follow that ideas are eternal, with or without us? I’m

hedging my bets that it’s only salt mist sparkling out there above the swells and not

angels laughing at our presumptions and befuddlement. I let the last pelicans and gulls

carry my thoughts into the dark . . . at a minimum, grateful for the marine layer that’s

rolling in, keeping us at a distance from the stars, from that dust glimmering above the sea

where no prayer keeps the sea birds in the air. I take a last sip of wine and send some

Saludos toward the transcendental clouds heading beyond the ocean’s edge. . . .

Falling leaves . . . what use

is all I’ve learned—clouds passing

in front of the moon?