This coast named for the Redwoods is
and has been for an eon
in convergence:
convergence of the solid rock of land and sea
with molten earth;
of rivers with the ocean;
the Wiyot, Pah-to-waht and We-ke,
the Yurok, Hupa and Whilkut
with invaders and with one another;
of urbanites with people of the land;
the past with the present and the future.
The stories of its people
begin and end with the earth:
the land that separates us with distance
and indifference
while drawing us together
in struggle at the breast of its wealth;
land divided, diverging from itself,
yet colliding and comingling—
faulted and flowing,
dying and rising at once;
land accreted and uplifted to icy grandeur,
all the while crumbling and eroding
into the sea from which it came.
To the south,
where the rotation of the basaltic
basin of the Pacific Plate
and the granite known as North America
meet in mirrored motion
at the western edge of the continent,
deep rifts in the earth’s crust
allow the plates to slip past one another
with lurching temblors,
but without direct collision.
Beyond the fault called San Andreas,
to north and south
volcanic fissures extrude dense,
sea floor basalt
from the edge of the Pacific,
creating smaller plates––
the Farallon, the Cocos, the Rivera,
the Juan de Fuca and the Gorda––
that are pressed ahead
of the colossal bowl of the ocean,
to be fractured and subducted
beneath the rising continent.
From molecule to megalith,
with a slowness that is stillness,
the solid ocean floor of the Gorda plate
meets the granite land
and is transformed.
Deeper, heavier rock
is drawn into the mantle,
to melt and continue
the long convective cycle of rebirth;
lighter, shallower rock,
gathered for hundreds of millions of years
by the seafloor in its dark traverse,
rising above the undertow
like foam upon a lithic wave,
is accreted into the base
of the growing coastal range
at the edge of the continental plate.
While above,
in eroded folds
the duff and dross of life,
the clay, sand and tar
the mud, silt and soil of living earth
pulse, green and glistening in the sunlight.
As always and everywhere,
the land will draw the rain
and rain will draw the land
into the sea.
But the land clings to itself at the end
in alluvial fans and flood plains—
and at the eroded mouths of rivers,
muddy and choked on backwaters,
building and rebuilding
seawalls of silt and sand
that hold the sweet, green water
and its treasure of soil,
lagoons and bays will form,
and people will come
to live upon their shores.