#57

Thick, sea-skeletoned branches
tilt up to each other, this beach hut
looking like the folded hands
of the oldest surf rat in all of California,

the canyoned mud slide mountain
of La Conchita watches like an abscess
as one man fishes, waist deep in freezing water.

Humid horses kick up dust in rectangular pens,
and the gas station attendant imbues them
with meaning--storm's coming, and I've seen
storms before--thinks to cross the road

and warn the fisherman but thinks
the hut will keep him safe,
the ocean is a prayer.