The road

The road south from Olema weaves
through encroaching woods. Nearer
Bolinas it opens out. Along the lagoon
there’s a stretch that crawls in summer.

I slept alone in an upstairs cot, the sea
and wind lay beachward half a block.
The Way comes and goes, the I Ching says,
handing us a rhythm then disregarding it.

Oceans swell and fall to the moon’s pull.
Its movements trace stories on the floor.
Certainty arises, tangible at moments
as feelings or convictions, and we know it.

It’s never clear how these remnants add up.
Shells, rocks, and sea glass aren’t a beach,
just ephemera with histories attached,
eyes rolled back in ecstatic blankness.

Between zero and infinite you need a rule
that unfolds to catch the prime numbers
that spike up amid ordered life like the rocks
out there with their gulls, seals, and sharks.

Memory too has truths and perils. Shrines
litter its byways, left by time in disrepair.
The trek seems daunting, a pilgrimage
without its Compostela — Stinson Beach.