SPRING 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. (Margaret Ross)
Friday, April 19
Friday, April 19
Friday, April 19
SPRING 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. (Margaret Ross)