on mount diablo
Wi l l i a m Ke e n e r
Into the Evening
H
Paul Kratter, paulkratter.com
ere, the sedimentary rocks of the town where I was raised lift up, the layers of ancient seabed exposed in ridges running left to right, time turned on its side— Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene.
Beyond, a solitary hawk sits silhouetted on a prow of rock, listening for the soft-footed mice to slip from chaparral. A frieze of oak trees holds black limbs still in the winter solstice air.
At this height, the twilight rises, a tidal shadow deepening the cold of the cloudless atmosphere, sharpening the view until it seems every level is visible, beginning with an ordinary puddle.
Far below, the minuscule windows are jewels on glowing webs, luminescent growth in the valley of a hundred thousand, their tide of streetlights and headlights rising up the mountain where I stand.
This shallow rain-filled basin is a dish for living algae, a colony caught on a monolithic hump, the back of the sandstone whale sounding the depths of the dark shales that surround us.
It’s getting late, and the keys are already in my hand, but before I make the steep drive back, the surface of that transient puddle takes the firmament of galactic fire and lays it at my feet.
Bay Area native William Keener’s poems have appeared most recently in the Atlanta Review, Water-Stone Review, and the West Marin Review. His nature poetry chapbook Gold Leaf on Granite (2009) won the Anabiosis Press Award. When not writing poetry, Keener works as an environmental lawyer and, in his spare time, studies marine mammals in San Francisco Bay with Golden Gate Cetacean Research. j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 1
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