some say it’s the water here
we drink, or the last gold-rush
flakes glinting, in the air, or
because we are the human remains
our continent’s emptied here—no farther
at the ocean’s edge
run out of land;

some say it’s the gods’ favor, the Pacific Ocean,
its windy assiduous whisk broom; some say
it's July, August fog dampening
dampening, flattening us to our knees,
only in praise to rise up
for the light!

—but where are our words?
where is a painter of this moment
in the western sundown that turns our backyards,
our house walls
gold; where’s a paint tube labeled ‘infinity,’
gold the roofs, gold
the Monterey pines, the Muni bus, gold
the bedroom windows burning? where
hosannas for sinners and saints equal
in this evening, where a dance, a song
in memoriam?


© by Grace Hughes Chappell.
Used with the author’s permission.