Tor House
for Robinson Jeffers

Clouds roll off the Pacific,
butt the mountain, break and spill 
their dark diagonals 
against the western slope.

Had Rembrandt etched this rain
it might have tumbled from the right,
inked striations angled at a village 
implied by brief strokes 
left of center on the flat horizon;
a squat windmill would spread its arms
against the coming storm, and
a boy would lead a cow toward sunlight
that cast its rays from an upper quadrant.

There’d be no flabby face in funny hats, 
of course, but some burgher, priest, 
or loutish clown suggested by a smudge, 
the artist perhaps, slipping into costume.
This would be a civil battle 
between water, wind, and fire 
waged above a plain of cultivated earth.

But on this shattered coast
where Jeffers built a tower of rock
against the slashing surf,  
airborne ocean batters boundaries, 
dislodges boulders,
dumps its darkness on the world.

And yet, by some precise economy 
the salted valley east of the Sierra 
gets no rain.  Endless sun bleaches 
bones left by rodents and lizards,
preparing them for dust. 

Between these two extremes a corridor
pocked with chunks of hardened lava
tells us we are young yet and turbulent.

Nevada Test Site
June 24, 1957, 6:02 a.m.
Operation Plumbob: “Priscilla”  (37 kilotons)

We are headed back to Ohio,
black dirt, green woods, muddy creeks,
home once, now collapsing
beneath time and distance,
these trips attempts at excavation,
every year more futile
as the thin thread by which 
our parents try to tether us 
to uncles, aunts, and cousins,
frays against the massive coastal plate
on which we drift.

Darkness slips off the stern
of our fifty-seven Ford
into the western wake where L.A. sank
hours before. The desert leaks its chill
through the window glass.  Our sealed pod
slides silent through the Nevada night,
our father’s anger subsided, 
the family dormant since Barstow.  
Now we stir seed by seed to his 
crooning “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,”
one hand rhythmically patting 
our mother’s knee, the other 
tapping out the tune
against the vibrating wheel.

Day is afoot somewhere 
down that long tube our headlights cut 
out of the gray slate of the eastern sky, 
day aborning, laying down a rail-straight highway
of shimmering concrete and gun barrel heat, 
Vegas by breakfast, Great Salt Lake by nightfall.

You choose this moment 
to burst into being
above the yuccas, the sagebrush, 
the flat subservient sand,
slip your little apocalypse 
into the narrow space
between the last remnant of night
and the thickening dawn,
steal a shard from the sun
to crack apart the horizon,
a flash that spreads a white stain
then contracts to a chrysanthemum 
of a hole that hangs 
just long and low enough 
against the northern sky
to sear your image onto my retina.

Late in life our father will protest,
he never hit our mother.
We will somewhat agree,
recalling whirlwinds of words
from across the seat of a car,
a kitchen table, spilling
through a bedroom door,
that swept the sound from her mouth,
reduced her, having found some mantra 
that worked a salve around her hurt,
to a flat and wordless humming,
a stubble of herself.

I am twelve, have just begun to sprout 
a map of sinews, muscles, veins,
have not yet found a voice
within my strange unstable throat,
too young to know the cause 
of his howling wind 
that can erupt without warning
from a man who can coax 
a bluebird to take a peanut 
from his open palm.

But I wake on the cusp 
of this June morning
to your dawning, 
scramble for the radio 
where a rush of desert static 
confirms your birth.
When day comes, 
it rises on the other side
of your white flame.  
The thread has snapped,
the journey twisted back 
onto itself, the road 
a fist that grasps the universe
in tight concentric circles.