That stretch of coast like the soft area
in your self, the heart of your self I call
your soul. That sensation that comes there, when fog settles
Really I understand I am strolling inside
a cloud. Intangible. Concrete. Both
simultaneously. Sweetie, I require to inform you something
after we complete, this evening, with this supper
I’m preparing– rainbow chard wilted in oil
with shallots and pepitas, herb-rubbed chicken
currently roasting. Even on these hot days,
far from the cool coast of California, when I’m with you,
I am inside such a cloud. This is how I understand
I will not ever think in paradise if paradise isn’t ideal
here, with you. Our sunflowers keep returning,
every year after year, because that very first year
we drove seeds under our brand-new backyard’s soft soil.
That, dear heart, is it. It is the softness I require
to thank you for. I ‘d be lost without that
part of you that alleviates up enough to let me in.
Closes back around me. For many years,
on the edge of California’s coast, ship after ship
after European ship cruised past. An inlet
protected inside a cloud. Safe the sweet odor
of California buckeye and dirty green sage. Safe
the spineflower, checker lily, blue bloom. Unhurt
the little native bees and yellow-faced bumble bees
who avoid from flower to flower. Unhurt
the coast buckwheat, and the intense skipper
and gossamer-winged butterflies who require buckwheat
to endure. Unscathed the lumbering grizzly.
Unhurt, up until thinned fog let ships in, the snakes
and mountain lions too. You’ve lived enough time,
sweetie. You’ve focused on your history.
You understand what some individuals will do if allowed
to the part of your self you invested so long securing.
You revealed me this anchorage. Those soft brown
shoulders. The headlands. Here I am. Much in blossom!
And me, with you, in all this soft wild buzzing.
(This poem initially appeared in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World)
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Camille T. Dungy is the author of the book-length narrative Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden; 4 collections of poetry, consisting of most just recently Trophic Cascade; and the essay collection Manual to Relative StrangersShe modified Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and co-edited From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound GreatDungy is the existing poetry editor for Orion publication. Dungy’s other honors consist of the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts in both prose and poetry. She is a university identified teacher at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins.
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