from ATLAS
If we can ever
know El Niño
or the waters’ rise,
a new tide line smudged
as the wetlands reclaim
their ties to the sea.
When these cliffs collapse,
cities built over marshes
and in the river’s
meandering path
who chose to build on the edge
of the Pacific?
How long was this infill
supposed to last?
The king tide oversteps
the confines of Spring.
The estuary knows
the ocean is coming.
When they arrived,
the four islands were one.
In oak and pine
and grass this landmass
permanent as the sky.
Even as the ocean rose,
Santarosae seemed to offer
unlimited nourishment.
The Holocene, the highlands
only visible above the sea,
our livestock let loose
and other invasions.
Not in any lifetimes
will the damage be undone.
they are the sultry
there has been a lot
of burning lately
much talked over
the most important story
of our time
of all time
neither is it easy
to forget the myths
as a discrete event
but no placid climate
what is easier to imagine
bats at twilight darting
a great egret stepping
No song for the waters of St. Francis,
nor one which came so quickly
down the beautiful territory.
Who never said a word,
that the closest harmony existed
free from the fogs of the sea.
And still it was dark
what could not be quenched
for the flower and the tree.
Note the mountain slope
and the destined path of the waters
through the deepest west.
Hope for an early beginning to the rainy season, the renewal of the earth,
but the Santa Ana season is now permanent.
No possibility of secrecy in a landscape altered by fortune, the possible plight
of these nascent neighborhoods.
A belt of fine gardens and orchards from every point in the city.
Sometimes the doors are opened for a legacy of stewardship on the land,
buildings mistaken for monuments.
This loving survey of the past for the uncertainty of what we see.
Familiar vistas of the sea are lost and out of scale with the present.
For the history of this water not even a photograph remains.
.
Glenn Bach is a poet, sound artist, and educator who lives and works in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. His major project, Atlas, is a long poem that documents his reflections on place, landscape, and our understanding of the world. It has been excerpted in small journals such as jubilat, Otoliths, and Plumwood Mountain.
