The January warmth reminded him
Of winters in Montana. Idling the beach,
Pelicans’ sudden dive through a rabble of gulls,
He listened to the trains for Summerland
Reminding him again of boyish trains
He might have taken, his people, who laid the track,
And great plains, tragic, surprised by August hail.
These things he wrote of, nights, his firm heart beat
Ironic with odd and even, the play of surf,
Venus and Mars. Later, silent TV,
Old movies for the old harsh intimacy.

Mornings, with his uncareless gait, he ventured
Round foreign car and winter bloom to where
Young men and old men practice the Christian life:
Nautilus, sauna, jacuzzi, swim, and shower.
And wandered back through Bonnymede, big house
Awry and empty, lemon grove heaped for a pyre,
Wind sock alert for a ghost plane. From the mound
The People kept their dead in, watching the fine
Bodies defy the fault-line in the wave
Arched high and cold, he proposed an epitaph:
No shame, no terror, and no day of wrath.

This poem recalls the poet J.V. Cunningham's visits to Miramar Beach in Montecito.

From Collected Poems by Edgar Bowers, published
by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Copyright © 1997 Edgar Bowers. Used with permission.