Somewhere North of the Lost Coast

[Poetry]

by Ana Maria Spagna

You drove this way once and found God, or re-found

Him (and who wouldn’t?)

a splintered table, through-bolted, and the wide Pacific,

gray clouds layered three fingers thick atop. If you were here,

you’d carry a bucket and a heavy rod

to the surf edge and cast long.

I drove this way once, alone, the most alone

I’d ever been. Elatedly alone, I mean, not beholden

nor even seen, wet cloud transcendence

shrouded the last rise through trees

and a kind of terror rose in me not unlike, maybe—

finding God. Listen, those black mussels

I watched you pry apart. I didn’t know

the orange inside was a living thing, only studied

your meaty hands, hair beneath the knuckle,

splitting it rough down the middle, tossing the sharp shell aside.

You slid the flesh over the barb. Once, on a beach like this,

I fucked a man who was afraid to cross bridges.

When we drove away sated, the stars opulent,

garish, we stopped at each river to switch. Why,

I wonder, didn’t I drive the whole time?

The surf retreats then returns. Try to fuck away

the tenderness, try to cloud-bury the blue;

a hard callous builds under a silver ring,

around the bend from redwood burl stands–

buy old weathered wood here!

I do. I did. I will. I can’t help it.

At the visitor center down the road

a photo shows a Yurok woman

with sixty pound salmon on her back—sixty!

and the ranger says a gray whale swims just offshore

in the fog. Guess we won’t see her today, I say.

He shrugs: it could burn off.

When I try to say what’s been lost

where clouds swab the tree fringe

Not sad, I say, more like halved.

Black shells litter the sand. If you were here,

I’d tug you from the line stretched thin to show you:

Look, now, how lovely, the silver-blue inside

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of several books including Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going, Reclaimers, stories of elder women reclaiming sacred land and water, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, and two previous essay collections, Potluck and Now Go Home. Her first novel for young people, The Luckiest Scar on Earth, appeared in 2017. Ana Maria’s work has been recognized by the Society for Environmental Journalists, Nautilus Book Awards, and as a four-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She teaches in the MFA programs at Antioch University, Los Angeles and Western Colorado University, and she lives in the North Cascades.