I. The Bones of the Headlands
(Point Cabrillo, CA)

The bones of the headlands
are carved by the blood of the sea,
each corner a jagged change
of time
as land turns back
to leeward
like a confusion of abstract puzzle pieces
side-winding in space,
lands of the periphery,
supine.

The headlands speak of eons
and the opposites hide inside their hard shell.
In a womb of the forlorn,
an infant crust of dirt and stone
marks the grave of these headlands
and like an old man on bent knee,
they contemplate the past.
The yin and yang
of the crawling and the crashing
waves below
speaks for the moment,
and steady’s the hand
of land and land not.

The gull knows the forces, the faces of these bones.
He knows false security in tufts of loam,
wet from rains, bitter cold
unwelcome to webbed foot,
while the ocean squelches, the sun stabs his moot
hunt. But the gull forgives and forages,
his belly as lead.

Like an earthly corpse
the elements have scoured, sculpted these bones, these legs
and lands
now grass and heather-covered
sinews porous, the marrow crusted and old
yet still a hint of fresh tucked inside.
The bones roast
under the sun’s lamp
to eventually spin into dust.

Water, wind and land are the headland’s song.
The gull, the piper trill it on the wind.
The song’s low octave is the sea’s surf,
the purple lupine harmonizing as color.
The moon, bright on a settled night,
drums it in its pull.
The headland’s place of rest,
is where earth-forms,
alive, dead,
hold count with time and timelessness.
Such notions
of shared beauty
find their youth
and winsomeness
of new sprout
in the land’s slow call.

The land bows
unto land.

Subject are the headlands,
yet as still
as ‘forgotten in time.’


II. The Marrow of the Inlands
(Klamath River, OR)

The marrow of the inlands
quintessential life
beat at the heart
of a rim-rock—curved like the spine of a dinosaur’s back—
summoning, guarding
the river from within
as it dances
delicately
sweeping its dress
around cliff’s edges
like a bride.

Sage-blessed,
pumping silently inside a mineral throne,
in a millenniums-long kingdom,
generously receiving the summer rains,
capturing the water, depositing it for late season feed,
offering a slow drink to flora and fauna not bred to survive
famine. Benevolent is this marrow,
dutiful,
carefully disguised by inland bones. (Are they fossilized?)
Knowing
life nourishes life
under the veiled soil.
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© Copyright 2009, Cat Ruiz-Kigerl