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On Mount Diablo
Poem by William Keener — published January 01, 2011
Here, the sedimentary rocks
of the town where I was raised
lift up, the layers of ancient seabed
exposed in ridges running left to right,
time turned on its side--
Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene.
At this height, the twilight rises,
a tidal shadow deepening
the cold of the cloudless atmosphere,
sharpening the view until it seems
every level is visible, beginning
with an ordinary puddle.
This shallow rain-filled basin
is a dish for living algae, a colony
caught on a monolithic hump,
the back of the sandstone whale
sounding the depths of the dark
shales that surround us.
Beyond, a solitary hawk
sits silhouetted on a prow of rock,
listening for the soft-footed mice
to slip from chaparral. A frieze
of oak trees holds black limbs still
in the winter solstice air.
Far below, the minuscule windows
are jewels on glowing webs,
luminescent growth in the valley of
a hundred thousand, their tide of
streetlights and headlights rising up
the mountain where I stand.
It's getting late, and the keys
are already in my hand, but before
I make the steep drive back,
the surface of that transient puddle
takes the firmament of galactic fire
and lays it at my feet.
Bay Area native William Keener's poems have appeared most recently in the Atlanta Review, Water-Stone Review, and the West Marin Review. His nature poetry chapbook Gold Leaf on Granite (2009) won the Anabiosis Press Award. When not writing poetry, Keener works as an environmental lawyer and, in his spare time, studies marine mammals in San Francisco Bay with Golden Gate Cetacean Research.
This article was a main feature in Bay Nature magazine.
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