California

The headland towers over ocean
At Palos Verdes. Who shall say
How the Romantic stood in nature?
But I am sitting in an automobile
While Mary, lovely in a house dress, buys tomatoes from a
     rode side stand.

And I look down at the Pacific, blue waves roughly small
     running at the base of land,
An area of ocean in the sun——
Tree by the stand
Moving in the wind that moves
Streaming with the waves of the Pacific going past.

                                                 The beach: a child
Leaning on one elbow. She has swept an arm
To make a hollow and a mark around her in the sand,
A place swept smooth in one arm's claiming sweep beside
     the ocean,
Looking up the coast relaxed,
A Western child.
And all the air before her——what the wind brings past
In the bright simpleness and strangeness of the sands.




George Oppen, from Collected Poems, copyright ©1975 by George Oppen. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.