Skip to main content

"More p'ease!" #2

 Before scarce we knew it, we were on the edge of the continent, in one of the most beautiful and port-less parts of America.  Westport may once have called itself the largest port south of San Francisco, but the Largest Port south of San Francisco never had a port:  it had a contraption of poles balanced on rocks not-yet-worn-down to sand, under which gangways might be lowered to deck level, but even they were long-gone.

There was the land, and the sea, irritating each other, as they have always done, each wanting only what it knew how to do.  Westport is a tiny place, even with a street called, "Omega", and a highway north and south, only, and a store with sandwiches and necessities and a gas pump on the porch.

Daniel had found a fine house, from which we could see--far out, but not so far--migrating whales, pausing as we were doing, because there was food out there, down there.  We could scarce see them blow when they came up for air, and their backs and tails when they went down again, but we did see them, huge even far off, as we rivaled each other in our desire to be the first to spot them again.  "More, p'ease!", as Elliot might have said, but she didn't; not about the whales.  She was eating, instead.  We thought it.






Our brains shifted us into low gears,
taking our clues from tidal rhythms,
hurrying nothing,
but as surely as rock becomes sand,
moving to the place
where rock became sand,
at the edge of the continent.

"Nothing lasts forever,
only the mountains and the sea."



We felt small; part of a large place; part of an old story.































Mari read to Elliot.
It wasn't necessary:
Elliot knew the story, anyway,
but that wasn't the point, anyway.








When we wanted to, again, we walked down to the port--Westport--where they had brought timber to the sea, to the wooden boats daring the rocks still there.  The boats were gone.  The port was gone.  New timber was growing on the hills behind us.  Some of the flowers were new, too.



Elliot picked flowers.
We admired Elliot.

"More p'ease!", I thought.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more