SUNDAY POETRY: "OUR VALLEY"

(Peruvian fog catchers, designed to harvest airborne moisture in dry places. From here)

OUR VALLEY

by Philip Levine

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August

when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay   

of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard

when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment   

you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost

believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,

something massive, irrational, and so powerful even

the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains   

have no word for ocean, but if you live here   

you begin to believe they know everything.   

They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,

a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls

slowly between the pines and the wind dies

to less than a whisper and you can barely catch

your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.   

It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside

and thought was yours. Remember the small boats   

that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men   

who carved a living from it only to find themselves   

carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,   

so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,   

wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.