THE CATS OF CORONA DEL MAR

There are cats in those sandstone cliffs,
tiger-striped, black, calico, white as sea-spume,
all wild, and common, with eyes
like split yellow marbles. Beautiful:
the beach, rocky and shell-covered, the palms,
sailboats on the water, surfers, the salt wind
cool in the tangled, beached seaweed.

The cats stalk gulls, but do not catch them--
this time. Our footprints are soon washed
back into seawater, the patterned trail
we walked along the water's edge covered
with the incoming tide. We carry shells
in Pepsi cups, whorled sundials,
fanned cockles, speckled scallops
and rainbowed periwinkles, snails, abalone.

One long line of almost imperceptable horizon
separates water and sky. The cats
disappear into their caves, the sun
into irregular ancestral waves, the gulls
into the wide and graying sky.
There is no moon. And far away,
the low, receding voice of buoys vibrates
the vast and salty darkness.

And it is as if the frail sandcliffs
purr to the beach, and the palms,
and the heavy sea: Blessed, blessed.
Beautiful, the thin and marble-eyed cats,
the wild and honest cats
that dance and make striped and calico music
and comprehend a disinterested and flea-worn
nobility.