Female

(A Tale of California's North Coast)

The sun was not so burning as her hair

worn in a crown, thick-braided, bare to wind

that always loosened one short strand

which she pushed at futilely with the back of her hand,

She liked the wind, choosing late afternoon

for marketing, the time the trades blew hard

against all things that grew or stood or moved

upon the land, so that they leaned a little

from the sea.

Her basket a Grecian urn

upon one hip, with over-casual grace,

she seemed to know how more than by a pretty face

a man is drawn by movement and by line.

At sight of her you thought

of nectarine and honey and the wine

the state is famous for.

In this mill town

far from the wide hot valley of the grape,

the loggers' faces were not nice to see

as she swung by; her long legs straight and free

from the small waist. Whose hands, hidden in pockets,

bruised high breasts, and whose made tender nests,

will keep their secret. But I think she knew,

and liked to know, she dragged the watching men

along behind her, helpless as caught fish.

And yet she was not bad, not by intent;

but missed her man the more that where she went

men were, or always would contrive to be.

Even with her asking body she had a nun's

pure look. When spoken to she'd drop her lids

over the startling blue that could be green

with any change of dress or light.

We never

saw her out at night after he went to war.

The gossips had it that her door

was locked at dusk. No woman was her friend.

They hated her

for the way, by only walking down the street,

she had their men before their very eyes.

She was so wise, so seeming not to be.

Nor could they charge her with a single fault.

It was too perfect: the lifted head, the hips

swung not too much, the slightly parted lips.

He saw her more than the ones who openly

panted like dogs after a running bitch.

He was the cool one, always playing poker

with his women, so sure that he could not be caught.

Only he discerned more than she knew

about herself, thinking: "She takes the blow

to her breast in lieu of that remembered weight.

See how the west sends all its lust against her

and she stands!" And so she did. And facing ocean

said to herself: "This is better than my own walls

and quiet. Beat me, Wind, that I may sleep

tonight and not with dreams . . ." She felt his eyes

assisting the wind to strip her clean, and turning

her heels tapped "No!" the long path to her door,

she hating him but hating her lone self more.

But this was not a night to be enclosed,

she heard the heavy surf strike rocks, saw homing

sea ghosts at her window, the sea smell came

through solid redwood. Tide, and the minus tide . . .

beach fires and Sven, the big, the wonderful!

riding the felled trees to their destination,

sliding the deer trails, dropping into pools

of mountain water: the live-forever Sven,

the giant bringing the fallen giants in!

She ran from the house his big brown hands had made,

into the white you walk through feeling safe-

safe with Sven . . . they would have gone together,

savoring salt as audibly as hounds

on a rabbit trail. Surely if he came back

it would be now-this was his kind of weather.

"Come Sigrid, Beautiful," he'd say, "the sea

is sending its ghosts to look for you and me."

Directions always troubled her. But Sven would say:

"Remember, sea is west, the hills are east."

And he laughed at her for saying "vest" for "west."

There is no place more lost than this when fog

moves up the shore like creatures wearing white,

and moving on to hills dissolves the town,

so that you meet your neighbor and say "Who is it?"

or touching a stranger call him a dear name.

Walking in fog with friend or lover is fun,

but going single is a haunted business,

as though this were the end and you the last human

on this last rise of land. And Sigrid went

alone. And each ghost touched her as she went,

dragging its wet across her face and hands;

came thicker, faster as she neared the sea.

Here was the steep way down, where manzanita

and madrone grow strong and low. She did not know

that she was calling "Sven, O Sven, O Sven!"

He saw her through the wavering wall of white-

the one who watched and did not seem to watch-

straightly she came, somnambulist awake.

He only meant, he thought, to save her from

the cliff, before she called his name-that name

worn commonly among his race-he had only ...

but the fog horn at The Point was saying "Lone-ly . . .

lone-ly . . . lone-ly . . ." and how can a lonely man

turn from an open door?

It was a night

for believing anything her body wanted

her to believe-that Sven stood in the trail,

dressed not in lumber clothes but a winding-sheet

up to his blond bare head that held more light

than the misted moon. Oh, this was Sven come true!

A night for believing ghosts can be hunger crazed,

warm and solid, knowing body ways.

Here, the old sweet place where the trail loops back

above the land's long drop. Blue ceanothus,

the creeping lilac, matted tight as hair,

still held the heat and scent of the wilder pair

whose mating cries were not so loud as surf.

Was something missed? Did she remember the Sven

who kissed a certain way before and after,

holy as invocation and amen?

This Sven who was not Sven knew only hunger

that levels man to beast simplicity. . . .

The long sigh went from her. The loosened lock

slipped slowly down her forehead . . . she let it be.

Out of his lethargy he caught the words

going away from him: "The hills are east . . .

and home is east-" The last word stretched to a scream-

"My God!" he cried and his outflung hand touched nothing,

closed on air. The young madrone she clutched

as she fell, was loosely rooted in the shale.

Feeling too small upon the land's black wall,

he called her name and only the fog horn spoke,

telling his littleness across the miles.

The morning sun shone white on rigid white,

the red hair burning on the marble brow.

"She has been queer," an old man said, "from the night

he went away." The women were ashamed

of their relief. The men went back to cards

behind the company store-all but the one

who walked and walked the sea path, after sun.