Somewhere under the Bixby bridge, high off the spirit of Kerouac,
I formed words with the letters left in the sand while you stood silent.
At the time, it felt like a new beginning, where we could start over,
to recollect the words the tide spit back up onto the shore.
But, it was the end of an article that took two years to read,
the headline: Man Searches for Himself in Other People.
Then you would creep so far into silence, apathy would engulf me, and
all the things I thought were important are what drag me under the ocean.
My ears still ring, and my chest still aches
from standing waist deep with my back to the sea
when the riptide whipped me under.
So when I think of Big Sur I think about all the cars that have driven over the cliff—
whether intentional or not.
And I think about how they’re abandoned, rusting below the waves,
clawing upward against the rocks.
I think about the couples who vanish from the shoreline,
consumed beneath the morning fog.
I think about what it takes to stop searching, what it takes to give up hope,
and where the hope goes when it eventually slips beneath the sand.
I picture Kerouac sitting beneath Bixby rummaging through grains of sand
searching for a sense of sustenance in a life he felt was insignificant.
Then I think about all the lives lost underneath Bixby bridge,
the minds that wandered over the edge hypnotized by its beauty.
I think about us running back to the car, and the words we left,
how the tide eventually came back to claim them, and how
I found a part of myself that was never missing.
David Blake is an educator, musician, and someone who pretends to be a serious business person Monday through Friday.