Memories
of Pacific Coast Places
By
Michael P. Garofalo
"Exploring
Willapa Bay today,
From Tokeland Marina to Raymond's river beds that stray,
And huge stacks of Douglas Firs waiting to be cut up a dozen ways;
To South Bend's grassy sloughs, piles of shelled oysters white and grey,
To the cliffs and river near Bay Center’s docks, where oystermen work
away.
Memories of this Pacific Sea and my septuagenarian life swell up today:
Our photograph
of the young surfer remains in hand, long after the teen has become a man.
The razor clams sucked the food from the foaming sand, for ten million years
following an identical plan.
At low tide the muddy Willapa Bay, scary like quicksand, keeps me away.
A dead whale in the sand near Orick rots, the carrion birds eat and happily
squawk.
The Baja beachlands baked bone hard dry, from the endless summer sun on
high.
I listen to the sounds of the surf from the shell over my ear, the sea so far and
yet so near.
I rest by my simple yurt by the sea, and light a campfire at dawn and just
be.
I used to smoke, now I don't, stopped making my weary lungs cough and choke.
I body-surfed till tired and cold, and ended it at age 50, just too damn old.
My memories of the ocean will hang on, long after my few big footprints 0n the
wet dirt trail are gone.
Lots of fishing but no catching, so the old diner's dinner menu was very
fetching.
The high tide left a flotsam line, and I walked along and picked up a lovely
agate find.
The crowds are all gone in winter, and the incoming driftwood piles up and
splinters.
Tsunamis ready to unroll from the offshore Cascadia earthquake zone, that
indeed could
erase hundreds of homes.
Summer kites in Lincoln City, crowds galore, sunburnt children playing at the
shore.
The lingcod fed around the breakwater rocks, avoiding our hooks in the
seaweed’s tangled locks.
Fishermen at the pier, baiting their hooks, waiting, waiting, baiting, staring
at the sea swells, waiting.
The Ex-Dharma Bums at Big Sur are gone, a few clever word-smiths of drunken sad
hip rambling songs.
“All life is suffering!” so some Zen men say; but I’m an Epicurean anyway:
Find ways to suffer less and enjoy
more Today.
Esalen hot tubs and philosopher’s seminars at the edge of the sea, and the
smell of cannabis in the breeze.
In a San Diego hillside temple Paramahansa Yogananda preached for one’s
realized being,
bowing in Child’s Pose and clearly seeing.
The high Santa Barbara Mission walls gleam white in the sun, and the priest
raises the Host of the Son.
In a stone house by the Sur shore, Robinson Jefferson lamented the presence of
mankind and more.
The Beatnicks in Venice still laugh and listen, mixed with Yuppies and Hippies
and musclemen.
San Francisco still hugs the hills, and the Golden Gate’s Bridge whistling moan
has been stilled.
I walked to the beach from the Green Gulch Zen Farm, thinking of Alan Watt’s
reminders and alarms.
In McKinleyville, playing under the gray clouds from the sea, Grandmaster Yang
Jwing Ming enjoys his Tai Chi.
The surf fisherman released the fat pregnant surf perch, a considerate donation
to the Fertility Church.
At
the gaping Mouth of the Columbia, stands Astoria, dank and old, with harbor
seals
barking loud on the docks so cold.
Chinooks and Chelais Peoples once camped near the Grayland strand, diseases
erased them all from this land.
Eureka Bay, wasting away in the plywood papermills’ scum with the old nuclear
plant’s abandoned concrete core
sort of undone.
Whether in Oakland or Tacoma, ports so busy, docks unloading, 24 hour bustling
cities.
The Quinault River flows to the sea, through a rain forest Olympic born, so
very very green as far as you can see.
Grays Harbor for a change is in clear skied sun, fishing boats hustle to get
into the King Salmon fall run.
Coos Bay darkened in the fierce wind and rain; while the Indian Casino was
bright and gay,
slot machines running night and
day.
Quiet Brooking, a humble seaside place, with the Pelican Bay Prison nearby locking
up
the worst of the human race.
Malibu beach surfers wait for the best right swell, then launch for a long ride
feeling so damn well.
My brother lives in Carlsbad, high above the sea; he walks slowly below the
crumbling cliffs
feeling somewhat free.
Taking the Gold’s Beach power boat ride up the Rogue, spinning and splashing
and speeding along;
nevertheless, it seems like somethings wrong.
From the dark depths of Monterey Bay, two whales came up by our boat to breathe one day.
A pelican rested on a Westport dock post, looking for a feathered lover or
a run of the eulachon smelt that he
liked the most.
All alone with the roaring surf, and hungry sea gulls gathering close on nearby
turf.
A tin of Ekone smoked oysters and French bread for lunch today, and a coffee
latte to let my palette play.
I looked at more pictures of the Pacific, my inner feelings plotted against
external criteria, trying to be specific.
The redwood groves soaked up the fog, intertwining their octopus roots for
centuries, confident of a long slog.
Flocks
of birds fill the Spring sky, and that some salmon are not running up the John’s
River is
a tricky fisherman’s little lie.
Dip netting for crabs from the Westport pier, the harbor waters were strangely
clear.
More fir tree trunks were piled around the Aberdeen mills, cut daily from the
distant lush Willapa Hills.
The Bandon cranberry bogs are fruitless now, but my Ocean Spray juice cup
carries their essence anyhow.
The sand dunes near Cape Kiwanda, Florence or Pismo still creep up and down with
the wind;
ORVing on them seems to me a sin.
The tides and long swells are the epic poem, the waves are the rhymes, images,
and metaphors chosen.
Hecate Head tide pools unflooding slowly: limpets, mussels, chitons, anemones,
urchins, even crabs revealed – a scene
that’s holy.
The mammoth winter surf at the Mavericks at Monterey or at Shore Acres near
Coos Bay,
both scare the shit out of anyone in
their crushing crashing way.
L.A.
is sandwiched between the Palos Verdes cliffs and Mt. Baldy’s stones, for 50
years it was my home.
On Ventura Highway, over the haunted Hotel California, just one eagle flies
alone.
My mom loved Carpenteria, and she held our hands tight, as we walked together
in the starry 1950 night.
San Onofre’s concrete beehive nuclear dome is locked tight, a memento to ideas not
yet right.
Navy destroyers in the San Diego docks are loading tonight, sailor’s readying
for a fight.
The Capistrano swallows return, again and again, a sure as the sun creates seasons
for women and men.
The tourists at the two Newports, one north one south, watch the slow yachts
moving about.
Seattle’s high-tech millions make Puget Sound home, settled uneasy at the base of
Ranier’s snowy dome.
U.S.Highway 101, El Camino Real, from border to border, carrying trade and
traveler’s under a funded Federal order.
Three impressive Pacific States in a row, where I’ve lived so long and watched
them unceasingly grow.
The
Café by the Edge of the Sea is hidden faraway, somewhere on the lonely south
shore of Tillamook Bay.
The Bolsa Chica tin-can beach years ago was cleaned, but now the smell of oil
stinks up the scene.
The Huntington long pier was swept asunder, yet rebuilt again and again,
despite the costly numbers.
Our sunburnt hands from Laguna once stung and blistered, decades later skin
cancer took her sister.
The glass beach at Fort Bragg glistens at dusk, the remnants of a trash dump,
just broken colored husks.
We watched the whales from that Port Orford cliffside café, eating oatmeal and
berries to start the day.
The smells of myrtlewood from the foggy seaside canyons still linger, as I
twist their dried leaves in my fingers.
Yes,
I’ve heard the Memaloose Ghosts in the Sitka swamps all talking, and I also
left quickly in fear fast walking.
I dreamt of skulls and skeletons, graveyards of broken canoes, Islands of the Dead,
creepy Clatsop Chinook stories in my
head.
In the Nehalem rain, with a deep dark dripping forest all around,
a Memaloose Spook spoke to me with
whispered words:
‘The tide comes in, the tide goes out, that’s the essence of what It’s All
About.
Your tide flows out, old man, so best now to smile and shout and stroll bravely
out.' ”
- Michael P. Garofalo, Memories of Pacific Ocean Places, 4/26/2022
Reflections of Beachcombers
Poems and quotes about the ocean, seashore, waves, beachcombing, marinas, Bays, fishing, tides ....
Selected by Michael P. Garofalo
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