Jenner, CA

We stay in a room the ocean accepts

as its accompaniment. Picture-frame window, one

bright line across it. Crashing waves

heard through the insulation as a continuous loop

in a film about apocalypse. Last night

the party, the ungentleness of love

of loving your friends, of loving too much

what you think you are to your friends.

Through the insulation, I know

the kelp beds float red and slick and competent.

The drugs wear off slowly, aria

in a cavernous theater. To feel or to stop feeling

I would give everything. When I get up today

I will go outside and walk

the cliffs’ edges, remembering a kind of script

for wilderness and sadness. I’ll watch

sunset’s thickened golds and purples

let everything growing be not

just green, but what it is: wet

from within.