Big Sur

by Michael Stephenson

The highway ebbs and flows along the coast
and lay-bys gather cars on every curve.
A mile past Nepenthe, you pull over too
and stand outside to try and take it in.

The green hills give way to sunlit crags,
crescents of sand and crashing surf.
Mist drifts off the headland like unmoored memory
and sails slowly over the Pacific.

You stay till you couldn’t say any more
if that haze on the horizon is sea or sky,
that shadow on the water a wave or a whale,
that phasing sound the road behind you
or the rolling ocean below.

Out here it’s all one –
you can forget all those separations.
Even the one you have carried here with you
which is now both the weight of a stone in your hand
and the lightness of letting it go.