Listening to Limuw
Santa Cruz Island, Limuw in Chumashan
A cry inside
drives me out-
doors connected by a thread a-
kin to the slant of light
Oak leaf and manzanita
ring the arroyo
Fennel never meant
for this place
feathers the bed,
dry by eucalyptus thirst
Cochineal loosed on the prickly pear,
feral pigs hunted to nothing
The thread through
time is and isn’t continuous
The manzanita has been here
meaning was and is but the toy
chapel is shut and the midden
is here
is hidden
Evergreen Cemetery
Santa Cruz, California
Tree debris drops on cracked slabs.
Deep dappling up the canyon.
The Merlin bird ID app, of the racket,
Says vireos, flycatchers, chickadees, towhees.
I’m a little above the 1. Faint plane, capped one
Working on a van. Ballfield and Portuguese Hall
Across the street. The contrast
Between brightness and shadow is so extreme
I can hardly see anything.
I move to the swoop of the Chinese gate.
Junco, bushtit, vireo. The weight
Of hidden histories. Just don’t
Go home. Raven or crow croaks.
It feels much better than at the other cemetery,
Something Something Memorial Grove.
Flat, exposed, gridded roads. I couldn’t bring myself
To get out of the car. Here, there’s a complex
Of fields, Costco’s vast red stripe,
Traffic, jay with a Cheeto in its beak,
The oak throwing things, wrought
Iron fence panels collapsed,
Caved-in concrete, empty bases.
Rebricked staircase, Indianan
Pier pylons for shipping
Potatoes to prospectors stinking
Of pitch repurposed as plot walls.
A hundred stories about a place.
Clink of a bat, some kid practicing,
Squirrel work. Person in a cardigan
Tucking in their hair that’s been lifted
By the wind. A bug got stuck
On the back of the folded-over notebook.
Now its guts are in the poem
Like the gold seams of repair
Material in the broken tablets.
Landels Hill – Big Creek Reserve
Big Sur, California, unceded ancestral lands of the Esselen people
1 ~
Something is making tones. Wind in a pipe, wind
in an opening. This is a story of a kind
of family. The creek rushes to the sea, water
to water. On my first foray beneath
the crescent bridge across the creek chasm,
I see the swells in the trees.
The new leaves are limp like me.
2 ~
I feel kind of sick – maybe the coffee, maybe
the herb I thought was mint. Sitting
on the beach I listened to the message from my friend, left him
one back. I told him I loved him. At least I have that.
A seal in the swell. Kelp tops like pez heads. Plastic
box of plastic cutlery
on the shelf of the cabin kitchen, cobwebbed.
I gaze up at it from my bunk and don’t think
about the frailty in his voice, and being asked
to his death. And not saying yes.
3 ~
Poison oak and ceanothus, wild lilac.
I pass through on a trail that hugs the hill.
The walk taxes me, I go slow.
A bluebird with its rose lands on the data station--
something resembling half a sphere as the hills at scale,
pale and fuzz-covered, extend into the interior.
I am so happy to have heard from my mentor
but later wonder how did I miss the sickness
in his voice—were the waves
too loud when I listened?
I felt saucy to be walking and writing.
I knew he loved flowers
but he claimed to have given up on making.
As though fomenting change wasn’t that.
I would disobey, lauding Creamsicle
California poppies. Every time
I sassed as a child it felt bad after. Had I
hurt my father, my father figure?
A seabird below is a scrap of paper. Cloud
shadows slip the hills like ceremony smoke.
You taught me to perceive
the systems and conditions
of my time, and how they shaped my self
and life. The line dividing
the deep sea from the pale aqua of the shallows,
seen from above, is so definitive, then
cerulean to the horizon. But when
you’re immersed in it swimming, you only feel
the cold grow as you cross over.
4 ~
In the cabin there are Esselen words
on the white board, and a note: “Don’t erase”--
-Efe is friend, meant to combine with other
words. I keep the memo
to have his voice and as talisman for next time
when you/
I say you/
I will,
whether or not you/
I know my friend is dying
Melissa Mack’s full-length poetry collection The Next Crystal Text (Timeless, Infinite Light/Nightboat Books, 2018) was selected for Timeless, Infinite Light’s first manuscript contest. Poems have also appeared in a chapbook, Includes All Strangers (Hooke Press), and in numerous journals and anthologies, including ballast, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Capilano Review, Entropy, Elderly, Hot Pink, Strange Hymnal, and The Town: An Anthology of Oakland Poets (Nomadic Press). She has been a recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Award. A long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Mack is currently pursuing a PhD in Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
