From the Santa Cruz poet and editor of the Homestead Review and Ping-Pong comes a tribute to West Cliff.
Sparkle
Written for my daily bike ride down West Cliff –where you can see me with my poodle in the basket–ears flying back.
At the edge–
spotted stones
and roiling kelp.
The day facets me in its diamond.
Wind-chimes are silent,
Buddha’s stone head bows.
A gap in the fence could tell–
mouth opens,
closes on a dahlia,
on a rosebush stripped to thorns.
A beheaded sunflower stem
holds a hummingbird’s silhouette.
Bees comb and primp the blonde sky.
Waves fall down–
spotted stones
and roiling kelp.
Shadows slink and slip
with the earth’s music.
With a mouth full of stones, I sing.
Maria Garcia Teutsch is a Santa Cruz poet. She has been widely published and has forthcoming publications in the Sylvia Plath anthology Fat Gold Watch and Eighteens, a UK anthology featuring 18 contemporary poets writing 18 poems with the same number of lines. She has been editor of the Homestead Review for the past 11 years. She also serves as president of the board of the Henry Miller Library, where she is editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong, the journal of art and international literature. mariateutsch.blogspot.com
‘Santa Cruz Poets, Santa Cruz Inspiration’ is edited by Robert Sward. Contributions are by invitation.
