Cape Blanco, Oregon

Photo: H. Utz

I haven't written a poem for a long time. But was inspired by an assignment in our Transcendentalists class: write a poem in the style of Emerson. Now, there's an assignment! I enjoyed this exercise and it stretched me, as I don't often write, or think, in mid-19th-century English. But the Transcendentalists have reminded me of a month I spent camping alone on the Oregon coast in 2008, one of the best months of my life.

Cape Blanco

Atop a rocky terrace against the sea,

Campfire voices strut, philosophize, debate

To the crackle of wood and bottles

Petitioning Phorcys against the dangers of the deep.

Weary of bluster, I escape to stiller ground,

Watch dense smoke nestle in evergreen boughs

of fog-shrouded sequoias beneath blackening sky

crinkling and coiling ever back on itself.

Alone I sit, anchored by sodden earth

Scanning sky’s vast canopy of leaf and branch

While the chill of wind-off-water

duels brazenly with an August night.

I stake my tent under full moon’s light,

breathe the scent of wet pine and brume,

ocean salt and the day’s last repast,

as midnight rousts a coterie of stars.

Cradled by Beauty, I make my bed

held by giants whose diurnal ablutions—

water, wind, rain, and tide—have placed

cold heavens within their grasp.

A patter of droplets pelting my tent

nudges me further down roads of dream

until day’s light presses awake the treetops,

announcing morning in ripples of violet and blue.

Open-pored, brine-soaked, I awaken

Bare skin a vessel, unfurled, to forest’s great Essence,

as surging waters above and below

embrace this promontory in tides—

a baptism of all both ancient and eternal,

washing the sands of this e’er-pervious coast.

                                                                        -HU