Blank page over the visible world
appearing to invite some reinvention
of the cliffs and road and sea.
If you drive here, you have to be
careful not to sail the car over the side.
The turns are sharp
and the rail, where it exists,
is too low to do more than trick a driver
into feeling safe. Why build a road
in such a dangerous way?
Nobody asks that question.
Everyone knows a beautiful view
from a vertiginous place
solves certain problems
in the brain. It convinces me
I love you. Beside the road
an iron spigot stuck into the cliff
dispenses an eternal trickle
over rock shelves crowded with coins
and flower petals. People stand in the dust
drinking the drinkable water,
looking out at the undrinkable.
I came here the day after I met you.
My father was visiting and I drove him up
with you inside my head
making me generous
and extravagantly cheerful.
A clear day. When we got to the spring
I praised the ocean, thinking of you.
Did he know at that point
he was losing his mind? Nothing happened
or only very small things happened
that I could now call signs.
The biggest waves
tossed little veils of spray above themselves
that hung midair a moment longer
than it seemed they should. After a bigger wave
a small. From the cliff, they all look manageable.
A bird lay with its wings spread
on the wind’s invisible surface.
I found a plastic bottle in the car
for my father to fill.
Traffic was bad on the way back
and it made him furious as always.
There’d been an accident. We were stuck
on the bridge for twenty minutes
with the day spread out around us on all sides—
the long flat cargo barges stacked with freight
and the runner’s path along the shore
then the elevated highway, the steep hills
packed with houses and trees and you
you were still only the feeling
of escaping my life.