Shirley Lim: California Poets Part 10, One Poem
- Jun 12, 2024
- 7 min read
Shirley Lim
April 2nd, 2026
California Poets: Part X
Shirley Lim
One Poem
Water & Ocean Shush: This Land
‘Nature is a language… I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson
1. Monarch
A monarch flits by my face, single, singular.
Is it searching for a eucalyptus leafy strand,
eggs waiting for regeneration? Or
has it not found a soulmate to flirt
among the ancient one-hundred-foot
towering eucalyptus planted one-
hundred-fifty years ago, when a passenger
who’d adventured in Australia
down under, planted roots and seeds on
the Central Coast on the right upside
continent of the world? Now the cathedral
of green long dangling minty fragrant
leaves, white blossoms, hard-seeded
blue gum threatens wild fires summer
and fall. Monarchs had reigned supreme in this
winding footpath, thousands golden-winged
hymnals to a Presence secularists
call Awe. I watch the only monarch of the
winter settle on a sapling, failing
flight to the high branches of stalwart
trunks whose barks shred like chemo
has burned through to their smooth
surfaces. Their feet are soaking
in muddy embankments of the Mario
Ignacio Creek. Foamy white rapids,
clear waters swift stream from skies taken
over by atmospheric rivers.
Forecasters no longer forecast
predictability. Catastrophe
has a face it bares whether we wish to
see it or not. The atmosphere showers,
storms, floods. It powers flows, slides,
slippages, breaking cliffs, cracking
curbs, heaving sidewalks, unmindful
of human feet, my timid body.
The creek spills, rushing clean waters
over a mini fall, with mini roars,
curving over stones that had been scoured
round though decades of drought-defying
floods. Fresh water to the Pacific Ocean
salt king tide waves. Fresh plus salt now
pool in the brackish wetlands.
2. Shakespeare in the Weeds
Like the monarch, my mind flits, no mate
in mind. I hear sonnets raise their voices
in the Mario Ygnacio’s rustling
waters, steady eddies after
atmospheric storms have belted through
our hemisphere, and find Shakespeare
by my side, country man to any
who will claim you in pages you’d
boast in five centuries past. What comfort
comes with your music mingling in white
foamy rushes fresh from skies dark through
two days’ double digits rain? Britishers begin
friendship with talk of weather. Here, climate-
changeful weather ends, sighing, like your sonnets
distraught, wearying of mortality
digging trenches, the seasonal onslaughts
in beauty’s garden, in Pacific surf and swells.
3. Just Another Day — June 4th
There is never just another day. The moon will glow strawberry
bright on June 4th on an Earth where only a few humans have tasted
strawberries. Skeletal thousands die today and every day.
One hundred years ago, white women were granted the right to vote
and they did not grant the right for other raced Americans.
Seventy-eight years later, across the ocean, the day
was so special it was erased by Calendarists afraid
of just such another day. Every day such non-trivia
ripple through my frontal cortex. June 4th today
is a different day with different facts to quiz my sleep.
Just another day when Ukraine will be blown up and nuclear
radiation will be our extreme challenge. On June 4th
I am depressed and will find a new reason to be happy.
The loquat tree, an import from China,
plumped by California’s river rains, fills my neighbors’
baskets. It is never just another day.
4. Shush
Another biker speaking to her phone.
Another morning or is it near noon?
Is there a listener in the ether
other than who she thinks is there?
The listener behind the door
of perception is only the Pacific
that shushes via the tarmac tunnel
to joggers in black tights attending
the funeral of another morning.
The ocean is without attention.
Life swarms in its shallows,
scuttling sand crabs, bio-lights
of plankton. Its depths cross continents,
unvisited trenches, shelves
beaching on boats, canoes, kayaks,
craft carriers shaped by hands
that once were fins, remembering
how to cut through water.
Shush, the mother says to the child
waving his fists, fingers curling
and uncurling, fins flipping
in the womb, amniotic
waters the little fish swam in,
ocean water crying in air.
Air is his life now. Water
his drink. Sky his roof and
Earth, sweet Earth girdled
oceans his mystery.
5. Ocean
Three weeks after the rains
clear water still shushes like
a mother shushing children.
She is calming after play.
Play in a bright sphere.
Dry bubble of drought.
Laughter un-reckoning.
Fields brown and crisp
dry toast for dinners.
Shush is the lullaby
that rain water sings
calming for the season.
Shush are the waves
lisping on sand bays,
tidals when the ocean
stretches herself,
stormless jeweled
in sapphire.
6. All This from Water
Creepers dangle dingle stirring
as Pacific cool tunnels through the path.
Every one claims this narrow land:
slow Americans who consume
more than eighty-five per cent
of global population; also toy poodles
brisk trotting with besotted human parents;
strollers with real babies; some with
elderly dogs their health prescribed
oxygenated air sprinkled with salt.
I watch alone passing solitary bikers
helmeted, calves pumping slowly;
two partnered; three and more
rapid motion commanding the gravelly
corners. Dozens of grasses,
flowering weeds’ yellow petals turned
to light between soaring droops
of old eucalyptus. All this from
water, light breeding nature’s
all living things including the watcher
come from the ocean a lifetime,
no, lifetimes, eons ago.
7. CO2
Another pre-noon CO2 wafting my back hairs
stir as to a lover’s breath. Sweet the harsh distant
buzz of mowers all awake this sun-washed blue
scape from horizon before to horizon
back domed. Clouds blur water-washed
pastels clouds gentling to our eyes.
Our siblings of this Friday--born
of the Pacific--another generation
of waters. Today is unlike yesterday
with its cumulus hairdos. Tomorrow
is guaranteed to be unlike this
present. None step into the same
water moment to moment. The air
filters the Pacific salt momentarily
each breeze a casual breath on nape
and leafage.
8. Destiny
Each morning a solitary monarch flutters,
swoops, flits before, ahead, by me,
no soulmate in sight. Every morning one monarch.
I assume it’s a sign of population
collapse. Yet one still ranging solitary
low zig-zagging the footpath in between
the eucalyptus shadows and clear sun-lit
gravel flying, never pausing, its starved energy
never latching to the eucalyptus twigs.
Unmated freedom is desperate,
not freedom for living.
A white-haired man
passes, hands gripping stroller
bars, pushing a boy--not infant, legs non-toddler –
walking swiftly I cannot glimpse his face.
Do I assume the man has a soulmate,
the boy futurity in his destiny?
The monarch deserves a destiny.
It circles, soars above children
instructors send zipping, zip-a-dee-doo-dah,
down toward the spillway on the right,
embankments on left, biking
to the Goleta beaches. In Latin
left signifies sinister. The right, right-minded,
righteous rules the monarchs’ destiny.
9. Greens and Clouds
Lime green,
dark-shadow-shade grass,
circles-bruised-green
where dogs hurtle round,
round, chasing tennis balls and tails.
Above me, ribboned leaves
sway hula-half-sweeps
below February’s gigantic cup of sky
where white-grey
brackish clouds scarcely move.
Or Earth is wheeling
with these minutes,
breathing water-scattered coverlets.
Stilled on a four-wheeler seat
breathing with sibling clouds,
eyes swaying hula glances,
mind blowing with ocean breezes,
blown into America
half a century ago,
I am momentary indigenous
cloudy under a skylight
opening to other skies.
10. Seasons Senseless
A flash, blue sky swooping, dodges
into a tall succulent, water-plumped
by January storms. February is summer
eighties, our blankets tossed aside,
restless, seasons senseless,
like scrub-jays or blue birds,
ornithologists, bird watchers
count. Today a man stripped
to shorts pounds on the walkway,
hitting the steep rise in steady strides.
His bare back gleams, not shines,
as yesterday’s beige flesh had shone
in 2 p.m. summery heat.
Today his gleaming abs are brown
almond shells, darker flesh no less
unfaltering than yesterday’s creation.
No blue bird sky flashes in this low gray-
cool-cold afternoon. Each day itself,
each day myself, strange---created.
11. Earth Unsheltered
Noon, and most are likely in church
or late lying in. I imagine
brunch around three generations,
children home not babysitting
others or schooled. Not conjured
from early years or social ideals.
Sundays were dull, hunger unallayed,
body sharpened to energy feeding
off flesh, bones butting off elbows,
neck clavicles latched like chains
in a rare black-and-white photo,
like the teens shrunk to under-tens
flashing in my super-large 8K pixels
Korean television screen,
raising unease at plenty and donations.
This Sunday the Pacific is tender
the shades cast by the eucalyptus
wavering gentling the waves
of heat unpredictably
February. I flew over oceans,
the Indian and Pacific like gulls
squawking, flapping on laps
of foam, who rest steady
on salt water, white and grey,
scavengers of human garbage,
water rodents, for whom salt air
is living grand. Grand living.
What humans who have plenty want.
Humans who have water, air,
earth, burn fires and live grand, grander,
now breathe in the smoke, filter
ashy water, and spade earth
unsheltered in California.
12. Switching
Valencia oranges are goldening all at once
freighting their little tree in my backyard
centuries later after the Conquistadors
are come, some say had conquered,
had gone away, some say with gold bars.
Spanish cathedrals adorned with stone
that shines even in the dark undimmed
no matter which history stains, the sun
captured in stone. Here, the sun is freckling
the peel. Another ocean rushing on other
shores. The planet turns on its axis, seasons
today switching faster and slower, sky water
stalled. Danger stalks creation, uncreating
as Earth slips-slides away, un-birthing.
13. February Summer
Face flushed from February summer sun
I sit by the mini fall’s background tracking
over and over waters freshing
wayward to the Pacific.
Pacific coastline debris, plastics, weeds,
long strands of kelp torn
from underwater forests to slime
in sunlight. Wavering shade-canopy
cools my human skin.
Ocean airs passage through sunny
pathways. Is Paradise part-sun, part-shade?
Part-heat, part-cool? The perfect
part-good, part-less-than?
I cannot tell. The moment
when watery winds dry
the sweat by which I know
I am fallen body
is today’s perfection.
Postscript:
“[The poet] is the only teller of news, for [she] was present and privy to appearance which [she] describes. ]She] is a beholder of ideas and utterer of the necessary and casual.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Author Bio:
Shirley G. Lim (PhD, Brandeis University). Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara. Recipient of Commonwealth Poetry Prize; American Book Awards for The Forbidden Stitch and Among the White Moon Faces. Published 12 poetry collections, most recent In Praise of Limes and Dawns Tomorrow; three novels; The Shirley Lim Collection; three story collections, two critical studies; and edited/co-edited over a dozen anthologies and journal special issues. Recent publications in The Hudson Review, Feminist Studies, and Good Eats, NYU Press. Co-founder of Journal of Transnational American Studies. Received UCSB Research Lectureship, Multiethnic Literatures of the United States and Feminist Press Lifetime Achievement Awards. Visiting professorships at MIT, NUS, National Sun Yat-sen University; served as English Chair Professor at Hong Kong University.
Comments