YET ANOTHER POEM FOR CHRIS,
ON THE OCCASION OF 
HIS BEING AN INSUFFERABLE IDIOT
(Later to be entitled The Possible Sky)

“WHY WOULD Big Sur inspire anyone to write? It’s so peaceful.”
				Chris Nagel, on the road to Big Sur, October 1998
I
Free Will vs the Central Valley
It is as I have told you: the stars hang in the sky 
Because we wish upon them. The high sierras exist 
As something for you to drive towards. The sky is here 
To balance our thoughts. Without it this land
Would make no sense. The simple facts

Are the best ones, though seldom the truest
Or most reliable. I have told you all of this before: the good things
Never pale in this world, so long as you wish
Hard enough to keep the stars 
From crashing down on your pathetic head. Look: the sky
Is here to balance our thoughts. How else could it be? I offer
The turf beneath you and the adjoining horizon as the only
Proof I need. This Van Gogh landscape,
The brown hills draped with hunter green cloaks, festooned
With flocks of Quixotic windmills, the switchbacks clinging
To the full hips of this fertile land; this place is packed with signs of hope
And futility. You have cursed this place as a no-man’s land; better to think
You have achieved the famed and storied middle ground. All things are relative
In this most relative of all possible worlds. Listen: the ground
Moves below you, as the sky
Moves above; you can gauge your progress in this fashion.
The simple facts are best; to feel the earth pass beneath, to see the sky
Pass above, can be, should be, must be

Enough.

The simple facts are best.

Some mornings, they’re all we’ve got.

II
I was a free man in Salinas…
My father says the skies here
Are larger. I disagree. I see the sky and the sky sees me. I am not smaller here
Am I? Or am I in this world to provide
Proportion? Think of it this way: Doves
Have their own agendas, yet we grasp them when we can, force
Boughs into their talons, harness their beaks with idealized vines
And for what?
For a moment in the sun, for a vestige
Of a visceral thought we had for a past
We cannot capture? Or for a feeling
That things are not so grim as all that? We discussed this, indirectly,
Over Mexican oxtail soup and chimichangas, reaching the conclusion
That what other people do with their doves
Is their own business.
As we emerged, blinking, 
Into the sun from the dark
Of Rosita’s Armory Grill, full size and life-like, we measured ourselves
Against the land and found ourselves its equal.
I see the sky and the sky sees me. This town
Standing on the shoulders of a giant
Is no closer to the sun. The National Steinbeck Center may as well
Be a monument to Stalin. The sky looks down on me no differently
Than it does on the call girls crossing the vacant lot
The tourists emerging from the gift shop
With Of Mice and Men neckties
Or the doves picking out their daily diet of garbage.
I am not smaller 
Here. I am not here to prove a point.
Figure that one out if you can.

III
Prometheus takes a holiday.
The [possible] sky is the only one that matters.
How else could it be? I asked you that day, if you remember,
Crossing into Big Sur across half-mended bridges
Past the chain link fences protecting the populace
From the inmates of Rancho Del Sur; and, if you remember
You couldn’t answer the question. The cloud
That appeared above the distant mountain was only there
To show how empty the sky was. The mountain was there 
For us to drive towards. The dusk existed as something
For us to settle into. The Moon
Rose as something we had forgotten we knew. We wore
Our daytimes on our wrists against the threat
Of the possible sky. We carry the facts of our lives in our hearts and minds,
And if we are true the landscape bears with us; here
The land had us by the balls. Our eyes ascended the old, sensate hills,
Flocked with rocks and banzai trees,
With love and rapture and envy. I have but to close my eyes
And Big Sur is there again, the sound of the surf pounding its way
Into the sunset, the wind beating our backs
Out of the possible sky. Without this memory
Salinas is a dirty dream, Steinbeck
An empty ghost, Ferlinghetti
Just another transcoastal wop,
The sky
Just a reflection of what we thought the sky might be like
In Big Sur
Or Salinas
Or Atlantis.

IV
The varieties of religious experience
You are the reflection of an amorphous memory. Had I mentioned that?
Or had you been certain that the night held sound
So dear that we dare not breathe: the grasshoppers of memory,
The cicadas of right reason, the locusts 
Of belief? There was no belief 
On the beach at Big Sur. There was the wind and the surf and
No room in our heads for the wisdom of dead reckoning
After riding the roads that wound into the mountains, cut and ripped
And aged into the landscape like badly sutured incisions. Our eyes
Were torn heavenward, away from the bulging landscape. We sensed
In the air the thick presence of mold and dust and carbon monoxide;
We could not scent the trail. We followed the blazes
With the rest of the tourists, primed
For what mean acts of courage
Might be required of us. As the trail broke onto the beach
And we made our dim camp among the driftwood lean-tos
And sipped our cold merlot from coffee cups
And stared out at the interminable sunset
We discovered the secret, the only real secret
Of Big Sur:

Mere poets are unequal
To this land. The wars were waged
By the arrogant and short sighted. Bloodied pens
Litter the landscape,
And, if you listen carefully,
You can hear Ginsburg screaming.

V
Veni, vidi, vici
Poets are all alike. We talk alike and drink alike
And move to the rhythms we think everyone hears. We break
Our lines alike; we assume we are honored
By the sun. We feel bound by the waves on the beach at Big Sur
And uniquely trapped in a society
That undervalues us no matter how caustically 
We criticize it.  Yet I can no more answer your question
Than I can explain the stilted dark comfort
Of Rosita’s Armory Grill, the significance of Pacifico Clara,
Steinbeck Real Estate, Freedom Bail Bonds, or the importance 
Of being Ernest Hemingway. Any answer I would give
Would fall flat. It’s like driving through Salinas: every turn
Feels like a wrong turn. Like saying
That God’s fingers plied the earth at Big Sur, these are His fingertips, 
Here is His heel print, here’s where He sat His ass
In the sand. We both know that if Big Sur is the earth
As God had meant it to look, He would have done it differently.
Wouldn’t have left a card on the table, wouldn’t have tipped
The bit. God knows how to write a stanza.
God also knows
How to leave the rest of us
Wondering how it was done.

All those who visit Big Sur think that they are instantly poets.
They are wrong.
That land, those terrible hills, the impossible sky,
The thick roar of the surf,
Mean as much as the intriguing contradiction
Of cold merlot. No more.

And so to Hell with your question.

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