Tag: bay area
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Monterey Aquarium
Feeding Time at the Monterey Bay Aquarium From the top of an enormous tank, a diver drops into the kelp forest carrying a mesh bag filled with squid chum. Moments later, many fish surround him: bright orange garibaldi and sheephead, rockfish, grouper, sardines, and leopard sharks. It is a diversity of species rarely seen so…
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Dusk in San Jose, CA
Dusk from a Balcony in San Jose (August, 2015) A man on his terrace ponders the breeze. This evening’s forecast predicts cool weather. A gentle sweep of cirrus clouds hovers in the darkening, cobalt atmosphere. Sunshine has crept down the bent horizon. Jet planes arc along the celestial dome. Stars emerge, piercing through the firmament…
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Burgess Park Haiku
The old, molting duck tucks its head behind a wing and stands on one foot. That grove of redwoods beside the town library is home to a hawk. Plum trees dapple the lawn with mauve blossoms. Sunlight glistens on swimmers’ bodies in the pool. Every night, cars parked under the jacaranda are covered with seeds.
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The Man at the Park
Clean-shaven, donning a safari hat, I see him each time I’m at Burgess Park with my young son, a couple blocks away from our apartment, inside the heart of a California liberal enclave. Square-jawed, wearing camo cargo pants, he sits on a bench and reads a newspaper, his index finger pointed like a gun aimed…
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Windy Hill
The View from Windy Hill Like most vistas in preserves around here, this one looks east toward San Francisco Bay: surrounded by buildings, spanned by bridges, modern and sparkling in the distance. But if the bench atop this overlook instead faced west, it would view wild land. Conifers along the ridge (amazing how the eye…
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Diwali
Diwali in Wildfire Season High-voltage power lines above tree tops: what we see from our apartment windows. The neighbors are celebrating Diwali, a triumph of light over darkness. The winds shift and we can smell wildfire in the county a hundred miles north of us. These gusts can snap a cable apart and spread the…
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West Cliff Drive
The sea, it heaves great sighs – rhythmic and persistent – like the steady breath of someone sleeping.
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Jim Harrison
When I Heard Jim Harrison Died I was on my way to Joseph D. Grant county park, listening to Prairie Home Companion. They played a Gillian Welch song, and afterward, in a mellow voice which sought to comfort, Garrison Keillor told us Jim had died – had swum into a celestial river where diaphanous angels…
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Moss Landing
Otters frolic in the estuary – water churns as they tumble about – and snowy egrets, like dabs of sea foam rest along the shore, their heads tucked under their wings.
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Floating Pearls
The night sky over SFO is bejeweled with the landing lights of many jet planes on descent, all of them carefully lined up one by one in a precious strand suspended above the runway like a necklace of floating pearls.
From the Firefly Galaxy 