Moon Blessing

We packed the last of the gumbo along with the dogs and

I drove us in your nimble SUV past Anderson Valley vineyards

and the Navarro redwood forest to our stopping place,

a well-worn cottage stuck in the ‘70s,

those same years when as young women we had mere whiffs,

in English teacher crushes and Elton on our 8-tracks,

of who we might become.

You let me carry your bags as you reached for handholds,

found the couch’s soft landing.

I rolled open the glass door to the deck, and the dogs whimpered

when you didn’t follow.

The ocean ahead seemed too shallow to hold my fear,

but as I walked the craggy ground toward her,

she spoke without syllables in unbroken waves of love.

The seabirds sailed beyond the vultures who circled Saddle Point

with such vanity I cursed at all that they knew.

When you slept the afternoon away, and the evening,

and when you didn’t want your coffee and only took a spoonful

of the gumbo we’d made — that strong brown roux — I left you napping and

found the swing waiting beneath a branching cypress and

I settled on its wooden seat and coasted backward, forward, back,

ocean beyond me, cottage behind. Everything dangling and tender.

Before the next dawn, as you rested still,

I harnessed the dogs and we crept through the dim pasture,

pulled by the moon’s fullness,

its light scribbled like a prayer on the sea.