It all begins again

PACIFIC BLUES, photo by jhhymas

I've been spending the day with the new book of Tom Killion's prints 

and the poetry selected to go with them. 

I am also reading in Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, 

which is all about us, human beings.

While the seas are rising now, aeons ago more water was trapped in ice 

and the California coast was very different, 

providing access to the sea's bounty for earlier peoples. 

Planning to leave California, which is so beautiful this time of year, 

makes me treasure every outing,

even ones that take place through the pages of books.

Point Reyes
                      Gary Snyder

Sandpipers at the margin
                  in the moon---
Bright fan of the flat creek
On dark sea sand,
                 rock boom beyond:
The work of centuries and wars,
                  a car,
Is parked a mile above
                  where the dirt road ends,
In naked gritty sand,
Eye-stinging salty driftwood campfire
                  smoke, out far.
It all begins again.
Sandpipers chasing the shiny surf
                 in the moonlight---
By a fire at the beach.
 
                           1952-56

California's Wild Edge; the coast in poetry, prints and history, Tom Killion with Gary Snyder, unpaginated. Heyday, 2015.

Small beach watercolor, jhhymas.