Footprints

Jimmy Johnson puts tracks
on a CD, Oswald and Baxter
walk their wagon across the western desert,

put tracks outside the Tule Spring corral,
and I raise a plume of dust
on the track from Wash to Creeper.

When the dust settles Oswald and Baxter
are as misplaced to history as a gull
after the tide washes droppings

off the beach, as I am
when mizzle washes footprints in the ally
behind the noodle shop.

In the shop's dim light
Atsko follows Johnson's tracks
through the mid nineteen-forties.

She sees me coming through the door,
calls my usual order to the kitchen,
and goes back to Jimmy.

Bristol Point

I drive the long cut around the nose
of Bristol Point, gravity pulls me
to the overlook, traffic passes behind,
down into the switchbacks.

From the overlook I see a fishing boat,
lights in Rubble Beach hazed by fog,
an ocean hiding it's purpose.
Behind me a fog-muffled crack and rumble

of rockslide, and Bristol Point closes
the switchbacks, heals the long cut,
covers the scar. Downhill traffic stops,
some U-turn and head back to Lincoln City.

Flashing lights weave into the switchbacks,
roadside talkers cluster and share melancholy.
Another crack and rumble, and rocks tumble
with the gleeful abandon of a child,

free for the first time in a million years.
Bristol Point sticks its nose in the air
and gravity pulls on the overlook.