By: Agnieszka Krajewska

The Gate of Pinecones

Will you come through the gate of pinecones
where Baker Beach breakers bite the shoreline
and flights of bent-necked pelicans
hover in the winds against the serpentine cliffs
that winter rains weaken and ruin

where the falcon stands still in the coastal thermals
and I say in a hundred round about ways
as we kiss in the bunker’s cement pillbox
and observe the coastal fog float on the inversion layer
that I have already fallen, that I am already falling
that I am already ruined, that I am falling
into the ocean, that I have already jumped
that I am dissolved that I am a landslide
that the land has slid out from under me

And the force of this is, yes, like high tide
like undertow that pulls you deeper if you fight
but I, like a surfer, like a fool,
went in willingly.

 

El Camino Del Mar at Dusk

The sun has just set and a lavender haze
             glows behind the darkening silhouettes
                          of cypresses that lean away from the shore.

Seagulls’ cries cut through
              the far-below breakers,
                            and sparrows spill from bush to bush,
                                          chirping the ingathering call of evening.

At the Land’s End labyrinth families
            are still trying to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge.
                          The startled moon has been tossed into the sky,
                                       and I think it will light my way,
                                                     but redwoods and bushes and blackberry brambles
                                                                   form a dim tunnel where raccoons rustle.

Darkness gathers at the feet of giant fennel
              and danger smells like black licorice.

At last, I emerge at the trailhead where the Legion of Honor
              columns are all lit up for the evening,
                            and a fountain out front conceals
                                         the sound of the ocean,

and the gray path snakes downhill
              to the city made of beaded lights.

---

Agnieszka Krajewska is a poet, essayist, and combat epistemologist. She received an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 2004, and was ordained as an Adept in the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn in 2009. Her poems have appeared in two chapbooks, Water Breaking (Ye Olde Fonte Shoppe, 1997) and Residual Heat (Self-published, 2014). She lives in San Francisco, California.