Jane Elsdon has lived in Atascadero for forty years. She is a prizewinning poet, writer of fiction, nonfiction, whose work has been published in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies.
Jane is also author of The Secret of the Dunes, Outdistancing Darkness, Shadow Work, Singing Dreams Into Form, Morning and Other Glories, and In the Rain Shadow. She is one of seven Plein Air Poets of San Luis Obispo County who published Poems for Endangered Places.
Jane taught the experiential writing
of poetry as a California Poet in the
Schools and served as SLO County
Area Coordinator of that program and was 2005 Poet Laureate of San
Luis Obispo City. She hosts a
monthly poetry venue: Third
Thursday, (Poets' Night Out).
She can be reached via email at Jane Elsdon |
Summerscapes
by Jane Elsdon
If poems are word paintings, we live in a region abounding with paradisiacal pictures to be painted. In the eighties I was privileged to housesit for friends while they traveled the world. Their home clung like a barnacle to a cliff side on Highway One between Ragged Point and Gorda. It seemed to hang there, suspended halfway between the highway and the vast Pacific. Talk about paradise. It was the perfect place for a writer to hide away, marinate in the almost surreal beauty of sea, sky, and mountains and to practice her craft without constantly ringing telephones and other distractions.
One of my favorite niches in that remote place was the deck overlooking a kelp bed that was home to a community of sea otters. I spent many an hour gazing down at them as the seascape changed before me from a fog shrouded mystery to a blue and gold celebration while my thoughts wandered and I got to know those cavorting critters like members of my own family. It was both marvel and meditation. This poem is the result.
*Sea Otters
On a Big Sur morning
waves nudge and nuzzle
the fog into lifting
its misty skirts to reveal
sky infallible and blue
as a dream aureoled in sungold.
A pod of sea otters romps
on its waterbed
dipping and diving
shrilling, barking,
bounding from kelp bed
to sea stacks and back again
trailing scarves of seaweed
like children playing dress-up.
They are reported to play Frisbee
with hubcaps, and I believe it
for I believe many things,
many dreams, stranger by far,
that my eyes have not yet seen.
Diving to plunder
its submerged treasure chest
one otter surfaces
to float on its back
breaking an abalone open
with a stone to feast on
abalone and elation.
A sea gull skims air and sea
to land nearby, fixing the abalone
with a predatory stare.
Splashing at the gull, whiskers
teasing briny breeze, the otter
seems to smile, munching on,
and you smile, too,
in willing captivation.
For a moment you are
sea and salt air, otters,
abalone, and sea gull stare;
as these gamboling clowns
cavort, reveling in sparkling
sapphire spray, their only
boundaries an elastic joy
stretching your own,
and you swear
you hear singing.
You swear everything sings
even the abalone being
consumed by the otter.
But then, who can resist
being consumed
by such joy?
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*This poem was first published in LIFE TIMES Forum For The New World
Artwork and Photographs by Gene Elsdon
Monarch Butterfly Banner Image by Mike Baird |
All content copyright Slo Coast Journal and Individual Writers.
Do not use without express written permission.
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