Member Poem

To Pewetole Island
 
I)
 
In the pale winter sunshine, I trudge
down the beach.  High tide reaching
the sand, hissing—and just beyond
the waveline, the stacks tower
in their stark definitions. 

These are the things one can know
with certainty:
 
age, birth, the dying
earth.  I look carefully at the stacks’
 
austere forms above me: hardened sentinels of melange;
the sedimentary deposits
long waved away; Sitka spruce and juniper bent
against the constant pressures of
wind.  Their trunks trace
the outline of chert, sandstone,
greenstone, basalt. Barely
a soul is out. 
 
II)
 
Where the beach narrows,
I walk into the blind
erasure of fog.  So defined
a minute before, the sea and stacks seem befuddled
in this halfworld of sun and mist. The waves menace,
the tide still rising. 
 
These are the things that may
or may never be known: the microcosm,

macrocosm, the impossibility to repair all
we have damaged.  How to understand this, our careless need?

Doubtful, I wonder if in the minutes after I have gone
the surf will close the door of my retreat.   I scramble
ahead of the waves,
walking farther into shadow.
 
 
III)
 
No one follows.  My footsteps
erased even before I am out of sight.  The fog
thickens: the stacks, the kelp, the cobble fade.
I sense more than see

Pewetole Island looming ahead.
Less than a month ago, someone torched

the Sitka Spruce.  For what reason,
I wonder, but I doubt I—or anyone—will ever know. 
For three days it burned.  Where I stop

the beach surrenders itself to the sea.  The waves circle
the island from both directions, confused;
I can only smell
the burned timber ahead.

These are the things that can never be known: the source
of life, what stands athwart the other side.  I know this

with certainty.  How you ask?

I stood at the edge and sensed all
that could not be seen.