Madysyn Amandalynn

A Romance

I

See the wreck upon the shore at springtide,
the windrows of the ebb, the shining rock
in surf and scum and sea-gluten receding.
Tidepools of the nearshore, among you I walk,
miles wending from Baker to Marshall’s beach,
in seafog and misty morn, through the battery
where algae clings to cypress like the frost.

Behind me now, the bluffs and serpentine feet,
the blue toes topped in greasewood that reach
down the foreshore beside me, the trickling seeps.
Before me, the mythic Golden Gate, the bridge
whose curveship and cables breathe marine fog
and vanish as they touch the Marin headlands
like Adam from his seat reaching out to God.

Down I dropt my eyes and knelt among
the pools left by the ebb, and there is only
myself and wintering turnstones here among
the recessed rock, and spray venting against
the further walls. And I saw prismatic colors
glisten from the trough, arms of leatherstars
and batstars, and spines of purple urchins.

Turban snails’ black roads, brown algae ribbons.
The rocks with boring clams pitted teeming
with gumboot chitons and slugging sea lemons,
and limpets who scuttle over one another
to save themselves from the dry, naked cold.
And hermit crabs pick clean a lidless sculpin,
and gulls encircle, and land, and grow bold.

And I, like many others before, like Prufrock
or Whitman, with trousers and sleeves rolled,
grow old. I walk the pools and perceive
that I have not really understood a thing.
My gaze now on the pools, now up at stars
fading into blue, now cast down again.
The tide goes out, the tide comes in.

All my life I’ve asked and waited for reply.
We go out into the world, we encounter it.
We are sometimes happy, others not.
We suffer, we feel pain, we want to know
Why is this happening? Was it something
I didn’t do, or something I did? Was it
my fault, or the fault of someone else’s?

And years have passed, and I have waited
for signs that came too late, for now I’m old
and do not want to know them. I hesitate,
no longer young, no longer strong enough
to bear them. I realize, too late, we were not
meant to ask. Not meant to ask, but be.
And I am like that wreck thrown by the sea.

Yet I know the story of one who never asked
but was. I can recall it, here, on this beach,
for it was here, all those years ago, stood she.
And though what must be said were impossible
to say well, yet not to say it would, to my heart,
seem a sin. Then listen to the tale I have to tell
of the girl from Scottsdale, Madysyn Amandalynn.

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The first part of a a longer poem I’m working on, about a girl I used to know. It’s about love, the Bay Area, tech, and time. I will serialize some or all of it on here, as I continue working on it.

Thank you for reading.

“Sunset on the Golden Gate Bridge” by Thomas Kinkade