(Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Presidio)
You may not find what you’re looking for.
Today light never regains
strength to make anything golden.
Mountains aren’t the leavened loaves
they could have been. Gone
is the longer conversation you planned
with yourself—the way aroma
of eucalyptus is distracted by wind.
The world is out of whack, aflame, unkind.
Some days your brain will not be wider
than the sky, as Emily promised.
But suddenly up out of the ground: stairs
made of railroad ties, rows of beautiful
reason. So you climb. You see
Alcatraz in blue and hear yourself cheer
history; the swimming escapees and you forget
mortality. Here, the rare serpentine grasslands,
Monterey pines, the bees fast
asleep in flowers, ravens
with their insight. A hummingbird working
her wings to live up to her name.
Marjorie Thomsen, author of “Pretty Things Please” (Turning Point, 2016), has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems have been read on The Writer’s Almanac and she has received poetry awards from the New England Poetry Club and the University of Iowa, among others. A poem about hiking in a dress and high heels was made into a short animated film. Marjorie has served as a Poet in Residence in different communities and is a psychotherapist and instructor at Boston University’s School of Social Work.
Featured image courtesy the poet
