Time-Slip 2

By Paula Friedman

Written en plein air at Pebble Beach, Stevenson, Washington

But I’ve known this shore before, but not
that day some years ago, alone
among far friends and one fast-hewn, now gone—
But rather as we fled, sped shadows fallen
from us in the wheel-spokes’ spin, consumed
in dust, the heat-hard trek, the wrong choice, turn,
lost chance—gone
behind us, missing shades now also gone
among, among those trees, not these,
that wandering gull, one pelican, great eagles, silvered
fish—not these—
long gone, long silencing
between these rafts (still swelling new-cut, aromatic woods),
between
those lifting fluted falling rapid-runs
no longer known, except
a gilded flash along a wooden paddle
proudly slipping crests
unknown, to mount a rising white foam.