I can't write about why I was angry that faraway morning on Half Moon Bay. Domesticated anger can be so finite, killed by kisses or the sound that suitcase zippers make in a bedroom. To find a reason after the dreadful fact is useless, for memory is less likely to be kind mediator than ruthlessly faulty judge.

I tell you only what I, walking alone, saw: the meatless carapaces of crabs, horseshit, feathers from so many different birds stuck quill-down in a circle. Ravens dancing around the sodden carcass of a gull, pecked to feather-studded organs, a clutch of wet rubies gleaming in the sand. Tiny snowy plovers relentlessly chasing the Pacific's ebb, only to flee its flow. A pale dried-out coil of seaweed flung far from the lush undersea forest of its origins, where, lost in its family, it had once undulated in a lively concert of leathery olive fronds amidst schools of fish silvering into the dark profound depths.




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