"Down to Heaven" [1972] by Janice Patten
W.K. Buckley
SouthNear, from where migrants begin,
up from the sands of Imperial Valley & sunsets
the color of sliced melon, over Vallecito Mountains
& down to Cabrillo’s Pacific, coming
to the shores of Coronado a NEW SELF
spotted 34º 20´
---a brain cloud in its skiff---navigating over silver-tipped foam,
pulling legs up from the kelp for the here in its orange.
Bumped fresh in his boat by grey whale, sloshing in the
tidal pools, seeing in the anenome & limpits
the tug of salinity, this self darts in the oleander like
Digueno Indians, up to Presidio Park, & spies
east-bound roads to the mountains.
CALIFIA
where I took signals from the spouts off Point Loma.
FoglandSee if you can the current of street---
to leave headlands where waters boil in the Baja calvings,
this hidalgo-lad bred at a moment’s notice to serve City:
his inner astrolabe in the infant Splash Zone,
the habitat where sea-whispers echo in the ear,
where he grows tanned & ideal in the Zone of High Tides
with sea snails and clawed crabs: until he finds
in the lowest tides the abandoned ocher seastar,
with its arms pointing East, pointing South.These first things
of childhood migrate in the blood to adult---
the red algae of Idea. Packed separate from Father
& nourished by Mother. Bewildering to sisters like sponge.
The mean sea-level of his feelings that beachcomb his heart.
Bio:
W.K. Buckley received his Ph.D. from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and currently teaches in the English Department at Indiana University (Northwest). Born in California, he lives near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, forty miles south of Chicago. His poems have appeared in Coe Review, No Roses Review, Left Curve, The Cafe Review, Graffiti Rag, Cochlea, The Slate, and others. Alpha Beat Press has printed two of his chapbooks: Meditations on the Grid and Images Entitled To Their Recoil From Utopia. His chapbook, By The Horses Before The Rains, won 1997 Best Chapbook of the Year from Modern Poetry magazine.
