The blues in the delta breeze

 (Delta) water, mostly runoff from mountain snowpack, flows through a web of channels to mammoth pumps in the southern delta, sending billions of gallons of water to 25 million Californians.

Sacramento Bee 2009

I.

On a clear day

in site of the Golden Gate,

twenty-five miles off the coast

of the Fabled City, separated

by the deep murky blue

and rolling foamy swells,   

a small out-cropping of craggily isles–

Drake’s Islands of St. James­–

the mysterious Farallones.

There

every October

off its rocky shores

and in its myrtle green lagoons,  

Great White sharks gather

to feast on Stellar sea lions and Northern fur seals—

an annual ritual of crimson and want.   

It is said that when these Great Whites feed

they are roused to such a frenzy

that their bodies bounce like quicksilver from the sea

in the precise motion of a volcanic convulsion–

as rows of triangular razor teeth clutch their prey

the blood brewed ocean turns cinnabar red.

The Great Whites’ mighty thrust

lifts them from the sea;

their eyes roll into their sockets

to become two tiny pure white beads.

There is an ole’ fisherman’s legend that swears,

that on the rare day that the sun shines

through the Pacific gloom

to reflect off those colorless eyes,

that one can catch the very glare

of Lucifer as St. Michael

cast the dragon into the fiery pit.

Twenty miles behind the shore in the Fabled City—

high rises lift open palms to the Pacific Rim,

vomit and syringes swarm the Tenderloin,

proud descendants of the Romans and Celts

hide behind the picket fences of the Sunset, 

leather boys strut the Castro humming freedom,

tourists cross the Golden Gate in search of the western-most dream. 

II.

But it has not always been like this

10,000 years ago, before the earth last melted,

the Farallones formed the cold coastline of the Pacific

and the Fabled City was but a depression of sand and grass–

nearly yearlong gusts swept

the powdery gravel from the sea to the valleys—

as miles and miles of frigid dunes formed far, far inland.

Then slowly

the sun warmed to an epoch

of eternal Spring on California’s north coast.

As the ice melted, the Farallones drifted into a rocky mystery, 

the Fabled City became the thumb of the Pacific

and furious salt water chiseled the San Francisco Bay. 

Inland

the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers

roared and merged to form the great Sacramento Delta.

Meandering waterways of slough and marsh,  

of sandhill cranes, waterfowl, and raptor.

For thousands of years,

in this resplendent kingdom

of the natural world— bear and elk, deer and beaver,

fox and possum wandered the Tully fog and peat mashes

in search of Salmon and the tender sprouts of Spring. 

III.

Then one-day

people came,

first Miwok and Yokut

then, it is said, ancient Chinese wanderers.  

Man and land lived like a melody,

unbroken timbre of life—

until the settlers arrived; manifest and heartened

leather Forty-Niner and denim farmer.

Slowly they drained the peat marshes

to form islands named after themselves—

Sherman and Brannon, Bethel and Woodward—

then erected levees to preserve these molded waterways–

monuments to the mastery of man over nature.  

Soon in a consequence of dominion, 

a mad diaspora of easterly refugee– 

grizzly bear and mule deer

fled to the Sierra Nevada

The land then plowed and tilled and sowed

to became bread mother of the earth–

rice and alfalfa, walnut and pear.

All along in this Golden State

of innovators and speculators, 

of growers and growth merchants—

cities grew and suburbs sprawled.

To fulfill this thirst for prosperity

delta streams were clutched, enchased, transformed­­– 

modern wonders of the world–

great dams named Oroville and Shasta, 

massive steel pumps sucking water

quenched the yearning fields of the mighty San Joaquin Valley

and south to the shadow motherland of fortune and modernity—

bear and deer retreated further and further

to the Canaan of the eastern valleys and Jerusalem of the Sierra’s snowy peaks.  

IV.

Along the narrow winding roads

that circle and twist the delta like a tangle of wire

some the world greatest engineers travel in big silver tour buses.

With a black microphone in hand

they speak to the obscurity of turbidity and salinization,

explain to jittery farmers and impatient developers

that the piper is calling his golden children home

and the tiny, endangered Delta Smelt, no bigger

than the palm of your hand is the paragon of this tale.

In a junction

between north and south the tourist bus stops.

The travelers walk into an open field

where Bovine cattle graze and a slow delta breeze

preserves the morning chill.

This small herd of humanity

moves toward a wood and barb wire fence.

A woman complains that she should

have worn pants, as she is cold in her pinned stripped skirt.

Another man looking awkward in a fleece vest, 

denim jeans, and cowboy boots leans on the fence.

He asks, “The land looks odd. Sort of like rolling…”

The engineer like a smug professor

interrupts the man in mid-sentence,

“…like sandy dunes. Yes, that’s exactly what they are.

you see 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age

when the Farallon Islands were actually the shoreline

of the Pacific and San Francisco was a valley…

sand blew across the delta and formed….”

He goes on and on.

But soon the travelers are not listening.

Another frigid ghost of the Delta breeze gusts through them

and brings a still silence and then an inhospitable voice on the air,

as if to say Great White or sandy dune,  

I was here before you walked two-legged and erect.

I will be here long after you cease.

V.

There is a great white dome that hovers

over the southern entry of California’s Capitol.

On the walls of the staircases are portraits 

of California Governors: Pioneers and 49ers,

screen actors, recalled and reformist, statesmen,

forward thinkers and forgers of movements.

Peter Hardeman Burnett, Pat and Jerry Brown,

Ronald Reagan, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger,

Hiram Johnson and Earl Warren.

What has been chiseled in their homage

and what shall be said of future generations of the powerful?

Shall they too ride–like a primeval reminder on the coastal tides

and Sierra watersheds that ebb and flow–  

on the great fanning tentacles of the Sacramento Delta:

Aquarius bearing water to quench an unbearable thirst—

both buried and laid bare?

For the late Senator John Vasconcellos who loved California and its people more than any elected offiical I have ever known.