When Drake landed on the western coast of North America
he claimed this place for England, this part of California
which is still as wild, nipping cold and foggy,
so that one can rarely take the height of sun or stars.
El Draque they called him, The Dragon.
I came into the world on that date in June,
under a full moon, with my yin and
yang of self, my sweet and sour
deficient reliable temperament. Me of damp heat,
in '58, bitter and warm, chaotic
as that swampy sand.

Who goes there to Drake's Bay now,
it's way to far to get to, roads twist through whipping
tule grass like an African savannah. Imagine
out here in this Golden State
something so blasted, something so unwanted,
so unplanned. Even the pregnant proprietor of the coffee shop
has the weathered unsavory face of an ancient ewe.

This is the devil's habitat,
the strand all stripped for him, the waves
with their conjuring tricks, a place where Othello
could wallow, where dunes copulate
with dunes, a site for horned insects, a setting
where one could make diabolical pacts, not a sacred place
by any means, not domestic as Inverness
or Point Reyes.

No, this a version of unbridled pride,
a subversion of order for a confederation of witches,
where The Dragon came to strip his heart,
where the currents of El Nino still wreck the shore,
where the infinitesimal tourists go home ungratified.
Here I watch the kites, the pelican
spirits that swarm inside my oxygen, this place
identifies my life, here my atoms whirl, here
my form haunts like a scorpion, serpent,
leopard, wolf. This is my church
of grunt and groan, my Eden, here I formed
light and darkness, here I made peace
and evil, here as lord I did all these things.