Memories of Pacific Coast Places

"Exploring Willapa Bay today,
From Tokeland Marina to Raymond's river beds that stray,
And huge stacks of Douglas Firs waiting to be cut up a dozen ways;
To South Bend's grassy sloughs, piles of shelled oysters white and grey,
To the cliffs and river near Bay Center’s docks, where oystermen work away. 
Memories of this Pacific Sea and my septuagenarian life swell up today:  

Our photograph of the young surfer remains in hand, long after the teen has become a man.
The razor clams sucked the food from the foaming sand, for ten million years following an identical plan.
At low tide the muddy Willapa Bay, scary like quicksand, keeps me away. 
A dead whale in the sand near Orick rots, the carrion birds eat and happily squawk. 
The Baja beachlands baked bone hard dry, from the endless summer sun on high. 

I listen to the sounds of the surf from the shell over my ear, the sea so far and yet so near. 
I rest by my simple yurt by the sea, and light a campfire at dawn and just be. 
I used to smoke, now I don't, stopped making my weary lungs cough and choke.
I body-surfed till tired and cold, and ended it at age 50, just too damn old.
My memories of the ocean will hang on, long after my few big footprints 0n the wet dirt trail are gone.

Lots of fishing but no catching, so the old diner's dinner menu was very fetching. 
The high tide left a flotsam line, and I walked along and picked up a lovely agate find.  
The crowds are all gone in winter, and the incoming driftwood piles up and splinters.
Tsunamis ready to unroll from the offshore Cascadia earthquake zone, that indeed could
   erase hundreds of homes. 
Summer kites in Lincoln City, crowds galore, sunburnt children playing at the shore.    
The lingcod fed around the breakwater rocks, avoiding our hooks in the seaweed’s tangled locks. 
Fishermen at the pier, baiting their hooks, waiting, waiting, baiting, staring at the sea swells, waiting. 

The Dharma Bums at Big Sur are gone, a few clever word-smiths of drunken sad hip rambling songs.
“All life is suffering!” so some Zen men say; but I’m an Epicurean anyway:
   Find ways to suffer less and enjoy more Today. 
Esalen hot tubs and philosopher’s seminars at the edge of the sea, and the smell of cannabis in the breeze.
In a San Diego hillside temple Paramahansa Yogananda preached for one’s realized being,
   bowing in Child’s Pose and clearly seeing.
The high Santa Barbara Mission walls gleam white in the sun, and the priest raises the Host of the Son. 
In a stone house by the Sur shore, Robinson Jefferson lamented the presence of mankind and more.
The Beatnicks in Venice still laugh and listen, mixed with Yuppies and Hippies and musclemen.
San Francisco still hugs the hills, and the Golden Gate’s Bridge whistling moan has been stilled.
I walked to the beach from the Green Gulch Zen Farm, thinking of Alan Watt’s reminders and alarms. 
In McKinleyville, playing under the gray clouds from the sea, Grandmaster Yang Jwing Ming enjoys his Tai Chi. 
The surf fisherman released the fat pregnant surf perch, a considerate donation to the Fertility Church.   

At the gaping Mouth of the Columbia, stands Astoria, dank and old, with harbor seals
   barking loud on the docks so cold.
Chinooks and Chelais Peoples once camped near the Grayland strand, diseases erased them all from this land.
Eureka Bay, wasting away in the plywood papermills’ scum with the old nuclear plant’s abandoned concrete core
   sort of undone.
Whether in Oakland or Tacoma, ports so busy, docks unloading, 24 hour bustling cities.   
The Quinault River flows to the sea, through a rain forest Olympic born, so very very green as far as you can see. 
Grays Harbor for a change is in clear skied sun, fishing boats hustle to get into the King Salmon fall run.
Coos Bay darkened in the fierce wind and rain; while the Indian Casino was bright and gay,
   slot machines running night and day. 
Quiet Brooking, a humble seaside place, with the Pelican Bay Prison nearby locking up
   the worst of the human race. 
Malibu beach surfers wait for the best right swell, then launch for a long ride feeling so damn well.
My brother lives in Carlsbad, high above the sea; he walks slowly below the crumbling cliffs
   feeling somewhat free. 
Taking the Gold’s Beach power boat ride up the Rogue, spinning and splashing and speeding along;
   nevertheless, it seem like somethings wrong.   
From the dark depths of Monterey Bay, two whales came up by our boat to breathe one day. 
   
A pelican rested on a Westport dock post, looking for a feathered lover or
   a run of the eulachon smelt that he liked the most. 
All alone with the roaring surf, and hungry sea gulls gathering close on nearby turf. 
A tin of Ekone smoked oysters and French bread for lunch today, and a coffee latte to let my palette play.  
I looked at more pictures of the Pacific, my inner feelings plotted against external criteria, trying to be specific. 
The redwood groves soaked up the fog, intertwining their octopus roots for centuries, confident of a long slog.   

Flocks of birds fill the Spring sky, and that some salmon are not running up the John’s River is
   a tricky fisherman’s little lie. 
Dip netting for crabs from the Westport pier, the harbor waters were strangely clear.
More fir tree trunks were piled around the Aberdeen mills, cut daily from the distant lush Willapa Hills.
The Bandon cranberry bogs are fruitless now, but my Ocean Spray juice cup carries their essence anyhow.  
The sand dunes near Cape Kiwanda, Florence or Pismo still creep up and down with the wind;
   ORVing on them seems to me a sin.
The tides and long swells are the epic poem, the waves are the rhymes, images, and metaphors chosen. 
Hecate Head tide pools unflooding slowly: limpets, mussels, chitons, anemones,
   urchins, even crabs revealed – a scene that’s holy.      
The mammoth winter surf at the Mavericks at Monterey or at Shore Acres near Coos Bay,
   both scare the shit out of anyone in their crushing crashing way.   

L.A. is sandwiched between the Palos Verdes cliffs and Mt. Baldy’s stones, for 50 years it was my home.
On Ventura Highway, over the haunted Hotel California, just one eagle flies alone. 
My mom loved Carpenteria, and she held our hands tight, as we walked together in the starry 1950 night.
San Onofre’s concrete beehive nuclear dome is locked tight, a memento to ideas not yet right. 
Navy destroyers in the San Diego docks are loading tonight, sailor’s readying for a fight.
The Capistrano swallows return, again and again, a sure as the sun creates seasons for women and men. 
The tourists at the two Newports, one north one south, watch the slow yachts moving about.
Seattle’s high-tech millions make Puget Sound home, settled uneasy at the base of Ranier’ snowy dome. 
U.S.Highway 101, El Camino Real, from border to border, carrying trade and traveler’s under a funded Federal order. 
Three impressive Pacific States in a row, where I’ve lived so long and watched them unceasingly grow. 

The Café by the Edge of the Sea is hidden faraway, somewhere on the lonely south shore of Tillamook Bay. 
The Bolsa Chica tin-can beach years ago was cleaned, but now the smell of oil stinks up the scene.
The Huntington long pier was swept asunder, yet rebuilt again and again, despite the costly numbers.
Our sunburnt hands from Laguna once stung and blistered, decades later skin cancer took her sister. 
The glass beach at Fort Bragg glistens at dusk, the remnants of a trash dump, just broken colored husks. 
We watched the whales from that Port Orford cliffside café, eating oatmeal and berries to start the day.
The smells of myrtlewood from the foggy seaside canyons still linger, as I twist their dried leaves in my fingers.    

Yes, I’ve heard the Memaloose Ghosts in the Sitka swamps all talking, and I also left quickly in fear fast walking.
I dreamt of skulls and skeletons, graveyards of broken canoes, Islands of the Dead,
   creepy Clatsop Chinook stories in my head. 
In the Nehalem rain, with a deep dark dripping forest all around,
   a Memaloose Spook spoke to me with whispered words:

‘The tide comes in, the tide goes out, that’s the essence of what It’s All About.
Your tide flows out, old man, so best now to smile and shout and stroll bravely out.” 

 -  Michael P. Garofalo, Memories of Pacific Coast Places, 5/26/2022

Haiku by Michael P. Garofalo - Seaside Thoughts 2022
 

"From north to south, and south to north,
Up and down, all year round,
     moving around
     to and from
     for food, for mates, for warmth and sun:
the swallows at Capistrano,
the butterflies at Monterey,
the geese from Canada,
the whales from Vancouver Island,
the salmon from the North seas.
Traveler's all
    on the West Coast
    flyways and seaways;
    like clockwork on calendars,
    predictable, expected─
         treasured."

-  Michael P. Garofalo, The Butterflies are Back

For a woman at eighty, or a lass of eight,
Time past or present carries different weights.

...

"The smell of the sea hugged the fog in the redwood trees,
All cool and dank, dimly lit and rank with green,
And in shadowed limbs the Stellar jays jabbered free,
And me, standing silently, an alien in this enchanted scene.

From behind the mossy grey stumps
the sounds of footsteps crunching fronds of ferns
caught my suddenly wary mind ...
What?

"Hello, old friend," said Chang San Feng.
"Master Chang, what a surprise," said I.
Master Chang sat on a stump, smiled, and said,

"Can you hear the Blue Dragon singing in the decaying tree;
Or is it the White Tiger roaring in the wilderness of your bright white skull?
No matter!  The answer is in the questioning; don't you Chan men see?
In the red ball flesh of this decaying tree
Sapless woody shards of centuries of seasons
Nourish the new roots of mindfulness sprouting. 
Yes, Yes, but how can it be?
The up-surging waves of life sprout forth from the decaying tree,
As sure as sunrise rolling over the deep black sea. 
Coming, coming, endlessly coming; waves of Chi. 
 

Tan Qian's raven roosts for 10,000 moons
     in the withered branches of the rotting tree;
     then, one day, the weathered tree falls,
     nobody hearing, soundlessly crashing
     on the forest floor, on some unknown noon. 
 

Over and over, over and over, life bringing death, death bringing life,
Beyond even the miraculous memories of an old Xian like me;
Watching, watching, sequestered from the strife,
Turning my soul away sometimes because I cannot bear to see. 

Even minds may die, but Mind is always free
Bounding beyond, beyond, far beyond you and me;
Somehow finding the Possibility Keys
And unlocking the Door out of the Voids of Eternities."

Master Chang somehow, someway,
slowly disappeared into the red brown heart of the decaying tree.

Then the squawk of the jay
opened my mind's eye to the new day -
Namaste." 
  
-  Michael P. Garofalo
   Remembering Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California
   April 27, 2012
   Meetings with Master Chang San Feng

Northwest Pacific Coast

Poems, Reports, Photographs, Haiku

By Michael P. Garofalo 

Vancouver, Clark County, Washington, June 2022
 

Four Days in Grayland
Travels in Southwestern Washington and Northwest Oregon Coastal Areas
Detailed Travel, Sightseeing, Geographical, Natural History, Activities, and General Information
Yurt Camping on the Coast in 2021-2022

Reflections of Beachcombers - Poetry, Quotations, Observations

Blog Reports: Doing and Seeing
Photographs, Notes, Information, Seashore Living, Coastal Travels, Yurt Camping, Impressive Sights      

Cloud Hands Blog by Michael P. Garofalo

A trillion seeds
wait for the rain–
dry autumn night.

A duck and its image
float serene–
clouds in the pond.

The last seed
falls from the sunflower–
empty pond.

The long awaited
rattle of rain on rooftops–
Thanksgiving Day. 

Gardens are demanding pets.
Time is something everyone runs short on and finally runs out of. 
An important gardening judgment -  When to Do Nothing! 
Remember that gophers also need to make a living; preferably in somebody else's garden. 
A garden is made up of stories, not things.
You are given Today - make it matter.  
A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb. 
To garden is the reward. 
Absolutes squirm beneath realities.   
Your garden will do for you in proportion to what you do for it. 
-  Pulling Onions   Over 1,100 Quips, Sayings, Asides, Observations by Mike Garofalo

Coming in
let me nourish
    like rain on a garden.
Going out
let me disappear
    like geese going south. 

Cuttings:  Haiku, Short Poems, Senryu, and Concrete Poems 

September     October     November     December     January   

November Collection I        November Collection II

Poetry and Concrete Poems by Michael P. Garofalo