The Gloaming Michael James

It was the boats that did it for me, the bay sloops and the dinghies,

Sliding through the waves, sailors discussing this or that option,

Voices calm across the swells.

Afternoon races over, the crews, 

Quite certain to reach the hoist before the gloaming

Retires shackles and cleats, removing them from easy reach,
Relax in their post-game contentment,

In the camaraderie of effort made mutual by common goals.

Sailboats offend not. They rend not the ears, insult not the nose.

They bring joy to all the senses: 

Grace of line, perfection of poise, sheets of color,

All things counter and spare,

In the vibrant harmony of tackle and trim.

In their sporting mode, they survived the rude arrival of the industrial age,

Riding out the black storms of coal dust and laid-down grime of soot

With scrubbed decks and new paint.

They battened hatches, stretched awnings, and hunkered down.

Now in the post-industrial era, they ride high again,

Spread new high-tech wings, grow cams and winches never seen before,

Fledgelings on clean new air.

Inland, beyond the city’s glare, in the gloaming, 

Man’s smear has also dropped from our lovely world.

It’s nightfall and flights of duck arrows, 

Visible only as plunging black silhouettes against the pale blue of sky,

Wing a swift and silent way towards their evening pond.

Crazy broken honks from geese tell of their owners’ belated fall to water.

Stars drop into sight as if from outside our firmament.

Rags of cirrus float past like yesterday’s torn sails,

Emptied of rain, gradually losing the little color they possess.

Calm fills my soul; my time of day has come.

Blessed dark covers what I would not see; stillness muffles what I would not hear.

Humans are hiding in their houses, eating, watching.

Resting after their struggle to eviscerate Nature by day,

They ready themselves for tomorrow’s onslaught, 

Downing the small survivors of yesterday’s sunny hours.

Northwestering Man has been mauling Nature since the pyramids, nay longer,

Since he followed the retreating ice and herds of deer 

As they meandered towards the flickering sheets of color in the summer night sky.

Always there was more grass, forest, fish, though summers came and went.

Lands lay behind barriers of water, of mountains, of more people,

Till he met Northeastering Man.

They made agreements, broke faith, murdered each other, spread disease,

Interbred, and they populated and repopulated until the lion and the lynx,

Moving away from Man, fell off the map.

I came to Northern California as part of that migration, 

From an island nation that knew of boats,

And saw at once that The Bay would become

The place where I would be the most.

 

I was more innocent then, 

Busy with the rhythms of my blood, 

Yet knew there’d come a night without a dawn,  

When no amount of prayer would turn the ebb into a flood.