Another California Poem

lost coast

clear-cut vaginal canyons split open,
slice into cliffs like legs matted with moss
wet & green & beating the waves with screams
in the mist amidst the California coast.
sword ferns poke their tips off hillsides,
fuck the air. this forest, studded
by broken totems of an uninvented faith,
no longer whole, still oozes humidity.
rain makes curlicue streaks in the mud,
fingers a pattern of letters. black sand
smeared with water spells desire.
salty, thirsty siltstone heaves
with graywacke so slow, so hard
pressed together gives
an intuition we might live
like geologic processes, or trees,
a giant redwood in a hidden grove:
open to sky, light
as kites in wind, wings bent, cut under clouds
to branches blind to everything
& nothing. all its history
written on skin speaks
the only adequate language. Braille
tongues into bark. a thousand-year record
scribed on its neck, naked, tall, exposed
to the blade, regrows itself. the roots
reach out, intertwine another
trunk like human ribs
seem sometimes fused in the morning,
sweat on the sheets, trees through the window
breathing summer heat, limbs knit, the smell of sex
sticks its wet red sap to the walls.