We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August <br />when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay <br />of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard <br />when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment <br />you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost <br />believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass, <br />something massive, irrational, and so powerful even <br />the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it. <br /> <br />You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains <br />have no word for ocean, but if you live here <br />you begin to believe they know everything. <br />They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine, <br />a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls <br />slowly between the pines and the wind dies <br />to less than a whisper and you can barely catch <br />your breath because you're thrilled and terrified. <br /> <br />You have to remember this isn't your land. <br />It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside <br />and thought was yours. Remember the small boats <br />that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men <br />who carved a living from it only to find themselves <br />carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home, <br />so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust, <br />wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/our-valley-2/
