Every Day I Awaken

Goddess,

every day I awaken to more & more of who You are,

every day I awaken to learn more & more about You—

Years I lived here The Cruz and did not know of the profound depths

of You,

I was not fully aware of the full splendor of the life of You—

Every day I now explore more of that depth,

& more of that life of You,

I learn more about You—

Oh, so much about You,

overwhelming at times how it all wants to speak through me—

The nature of Your waters, of all Your currents, the winds of the seasons,

how our climate is determined by You—

Indeed, I think now of the Threads I have learned about You

that weave the yearly cycle of our seasons:

How the deep, cold, upwelling waters of the California Current

flow in,

from up the offshore coast Año Nuevo—

It’s the northwesterly wind driving the warmer surface water

further out the ocean,

& so the deep, cold water flows up & flows in spring & summer

& builds up our familiar coast fog;

fog banks hang for days out in the Bay

& get pulled in like heavy curtains, sometimes for days;

& there’s, of course, the breezy chill that comes off those waters;

but it’s following then after these months of the ever-shifting

rolling in & out of fog

that we enjoy the oceanic season, as it is called—

We know it as gloriously gorgeous autumn,

when warmer, ocean surface water flows back in,

the two & a half month at least & more relative calm after those winds

of earlier months

subside;

it is, as we say, our often real summer

beginning sometimes as late as September;

& follows then the wintry season when the Davidson Current,

from the south, flows northward the coast,

bringing the heavy rains,

& sometimes for days it rains,

between which are periods of almost summery daytime warmth,

but the nights do get crisp, even cold,

& are starry clear.

Goddess,

I think of Your dark-most, deep-most submarine canyon

beginning just offshore the mouth of Elkhorn Slough,

that point at Moss Landing of the inner Bay,

a canyon sharp incising the continental shelf,

eventually down to 11,000 feet & more it goes,

there to merge with the vast abyssal plain of ocean.

Your sea zones outward the shore I think of—

The intertidal—also called littoral—where land & sea interface,

of cliffs that plummet to beach & surf,

rocky tide shores with their sea life tide pool displays,

& the varied sands of all the various going round

the Bay beaches;

& pelagic waters over continental shelf neretic out to the open,

enormous oceanic.

Your zones of depth—the photic epipelagic of sunlight penetration,

the twilight mesopelagic of the thermocline,

where seawater temperature quickly changes,

becoming so much colder;

the inky, lonely darkness of the bathypelagic,

& still the unbelievably deeper level of the abyssalpelagic,

nearing the hovering-just-above-freezing & utterly black upon black dark

where enormous pressures we can hardly imagine are

of the otherworldly realm of the very ocean bottom.

To think of the remarkable,

precious of biohabitats Elkhorn Slough,

its extraordinary diversity of birdlife, scarcely to be matched

in any region around;

its twice-daily cycle of tides

bringing salt water in the main channel,

& twice-daily ebbing to expose all the mudflats

where all the long-billed mud-probers

come to feed;

& twice-monthly the higher spring tides flood even further back

into the salt marshes.

There’re stretches of beach that go for miles,

& little, secluded beaches hidden beneath bluffs

that only a few may even know about;

there’s up-swept dune round the windy south bend of the Bay;

there’s rocky reef, wharf pilings of Santa Cruz, Capitola & Monterey.

I think of the amazing, lush, subsurface world of the kelp forest;

the sea floor benthic realms, the open waters spread out

to the great, sparkling, liquid jewel of the entire Pacific itself.

Goddess,

every day I learn to celebrate more of the incredible life

of Your waters,

beginning how the enormously rich varieties of plankton

that all life in You depend upon—

Phytoplankton foundation for all, zooplankton the primary feeders

& in turn food for all;

the profligate numbers of larvae of untold creature species;

the great kelps & lesser seaweeds & algae that grace

all of Your coastal waters.

Your potpourri of marine life I thrill to enumerate—

of jellies, sea anemones, hydroids, sponges, corals, barnacles, mussels,

chitons, crabs, clams, abalone, limpets, squid, sea slugs & sea snails,

sea stars & sea urchins;

there’s sand dollar & sea pen, sea cucumber & sea worm;

there’s ray & skate & eel, shrimp & krill the whales feast upon

by the ton;

octopuses hiding in crevices & creeping out come night;

the big sea turtles swimming far out the open waters—

All are Threads themselves of life histories,

of life incredibly interwoven.

Goddess,

I am always learning of Your fishes,

& always there are more

than I can name—

Anchovy, sardine, mackerel, herring, albacore & the other

big, powerful-swimming tuna, the California barracuda,

the big, freakishly compressed sunfish;

of course, there are the sharks—blue shark, thresher shark, soupfin shark,

leopard shark & the fearsome great white;

there’s bottom-loving huge halibut, flounder & little sand dabs;

there’s delicious king salmon & miscalled lingcod & red snapper,

but two of the over 60 different species of rockfishes;

also, we find catches of turbot & sole;

& there’s kelpfish, surfperch, señorita, opaleye, gunnel, bocaccio,

the motley, camouflaged sculpins, the sheephead, even the guitarfish

& dogfish.

There are the pinniped mammals, of course,

we all come to know here—

Sea lions & harbor seals lounge out on the beaches & tide rocks

& the surf-washed beams of wharf pilings;

& there’re massive elephant seals for months living out at sea,

only having to come to shore to breed,

they are the regular visitors of Año Nuevo;

& other sea mammals there are—

The cutesy, furry-faced, well-known denizen of the kelp forest

the sea otter,

once was ruthlessly hunted, now protected since 1911,

its numbers still wavering,

how it has a way of curling round itself the canopied kelp blades,

anchoring itself among them

to snooze;

& the cetacean giants among all that pass up & down the coast—

blue whales & gray whales, humpbacks & killer whales sighted;

& in the open waters, pods of hundreds of leaping dolphin

or porpoise.

Oh,

& the birds that are the life of You—

All the commonly seen of gulls & terns, sandpipers all kinds,

& plovers—

the familiar killdeer,

the snowy plover nesting in the shallow depression among the dunes;

the thousands-of-miles travelling shearwaters that come to feed,

the squadrons of brown pelican cruising just offshore,

even the uncommon white pelican

is sometimes a visitor at Elkhorn.

There’re cormorants,

coots, grebes, phalaropes, scoters, ducks all kinds,

the striking white great & snowy egrets, the great blue heron

& night herons,

rails hidden in the slough tules & cattails,

the kingfisher perched nearby,

the avocet & stilt, curlew, willet & godwit, there,

all poking about

in the mudflats.

Goddess,

every day I awaken to You that I might weave

into the great Story to be told all the places of You—

Your breasted Bay of Monterey,

from Point Pinos, Pacific Grove to Santa Cruz’s Lighthouse Point,

its nipple point the inner Bay of fishing harbor Moss Landing,

the wintertime estuary of Elkhorn.

Your whole sanctuary protected from northward of Marin headlands

& San Francisco,

to southward the spectacular Devil’s Slide cliffs outside Pacifica,

& southward still, Half Moon Bay, the rocky outcroppings of Pescadero

& of Pigeon Point, its tall, white, lighthouse a classic, a landmark

up & down Highway 1

for miles;

the bluffs of Davenport

where appear the ghostly blue distant Santa Lucias

back of Monterey & headlands of Carmel south;

& southward there, Carmel Bay & Point Lobos & down the entire

monumental big coast of Big Sur, region famous of Jeffers’ tales.

Goddess,

I think of all the poets, writers & artists, all with stories

of their own,

who gravitated to You,

each finding an individual path to You, they who settled here

or simply traveled through, how they participated, each in their own way,

in the splendor of Your life—

So I, too, participate in Your life—how my life I can see now

is interwoven with Your life—,

& now I celebrate You

& weave the Threads of You.

You see I am learning to write the supreme poem of You,

& even more—

Yes, even more—

You, the birthplace of the Mythos

announcing the dawning of the new World Age

You revealed

in Vision.

The Mythos begins somewhere

& must begin with someone

So it began with my awakening to You

as You revealed more & more of that beautiful splendor

You are,

that splendor that opens out even still beyond

the Golden Veil

Every day I awaken

Every day I awaken

May 2003