Memories of Rialto Beach

 Sometimes in Pioneer Square
in a rain that mutters
like homeless men down an alley,
the brine of sea wind reminds me.
An evergreen coast looms again
as I look through my memory,
turning my eyes from the city.

I see fishermen in boats
out beyond the throbbing surf
and the white wings arcing high
in the reaches of a cloudless sky.
And I remember how I longed
to rise upward into that sky
and peer at the shore through gull eyes.

In ash gray moods,
I try to recall
how the sea stretched my vision
to the diamond edged horizon.

Sometimes in an afternoon
of carbon monoxide haze
in the asphalt veined city,
I turn from street cries quietly.
I look back on a remote scene
where sea birds are slicing whitely
an azure sky in my memory.

I glance at the off shore rocks
standing in rolling fields
of blue Pacific waters --
their stone crests spired by firs.
I wander along the kelp strewn beach
on a day of calm breakers
that I see but cannot re-enter.

In ash gray moods,
I try to recall
how the sea stretched my vision
to the diamond edged horizon.