by Melisande Luna

Created on: May 20, 2007

Down on the Delta

I. Yesterday and Today

I come to the isthmus every September
to watch afternoons grow dust under the pace
of International Harvesters. Across the bay

men in Levi's load chaff on rafts
they'll push through bulrushes
with poles as long as a mid-June day.

II. Circa 1979

I was ten or eleven with haphazard pigtails
and chigger bites for breasts; a brick-red

ten speed hummed under me as I pedaled

to the dock, beyond the moon; I ruled this shore
with a gap-toothed smile and a bike from Sears.
I was the Capitan Kirk of oiled-down ruts,

with a bag of pop bottles on the hook,
my pocket packed with nickels -
summer's passage paid in full.

III. Paradigm Shift - (Some Years Later)

Content in a bayside cantina we sat
with two Coronas and four fingers of Oaxacan gold;

she strolled in with endless legs running
from the promise of her skirt.

I watched her strut, her narrow sway,
as my man booked passage to her port.

IV. That Was When

That was the year I learned
shoals sneak away with husbands,
and stars are gleaming lunatics,

that even mountains die slow,
or turn to sediment quicker than spit.
I really couldn't say that I cared anymore.

I was a seastack retreating,
suckled by waves, eroded
by the swell of breasts over a belly's arc down
to the place where I fell wayside.

V. How I Came To Appreciate Silence

Years laid out end to end as seasons
etched my weathered face.

Absolution was almost possible
until top-heavy and panting she

walked by wearing ridiculous acrylic mules,
trolling for attention, she had it.

He glanced away to stare, oblivious,
as I slipped into the current and bled.

VI. My Own Particular Axiom

I ache for the swell of the sea
over my lust. My belly is a fish,
decrepit with flies, and when the gulls
come to gorge themselves on my eyes,

they will glean my lids, force me to acknowledge
what I've become; a strip of coastal desert,
thick with thistlethorn and blown-out dunes.

I watch the men navigate the inlet's ways
and wonder if they'll reap what we've cultivated:
the unearthed roots of children grown in the silted water.

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