Stuart Watson

RAMEN RISING

My spouse and I live not too far from the Pacific Ocean,
and love to visit what people sometimes
call the Left Coast, wondering all the while
what the Right Coast is, and whether
there lies somewhere an Ambidextrous Coast,
a beach with wheat like Kansas.
Left speaks meaning for an audience looking
at a map with Canada on top,
and Mexico where it should be,
better than us all.
For a change of scenery, we flew to the other side
of North America, to see what the other coast
looks like, and as we were driving north
it appeared, off to the right, precisely
where the engineers
put this whole
Right Coast shebang. Familiar as a kiss.
Rocky headlands still plunged into the waves
crashing their protests at the lack
of access to somber, fog-shrouded
pocket coves, hurling spittle
at so many trees stocked still
and silent in their audience.
No applause. Just Canada, up ahead,
waiting for us, if we should trust
the voice of stoic highway signs.
Along the Right Coast, the sun
slipped from the sea all golden
like Bo Derek in that movie
that celebrated a scale of beauty
without the need for anything greater than 10.
This sun looked familiar, and the sea
just like the other one back home.
Did we really fly cross-country
to see what we could see
after a short drive, dumping three
tons of carbon dioxide to warm
the very seas we stood atop
a rocky knoll to see?
A patient pair of visitors could watch
the sun slide overhead and dive toward
home into the hills off to the west, a nuclear
construct of the O.G. sort, trusting it
to let us live another day, and rise
again just east of the archipelago home
of a still-haunted Hiroshima. The sun,
a blast from the past, source of life
on Earth, bobbing
in a massive miso broth, boiled noodles,
the granddaddy bomb inside what looks to be an egg
sliced thin like a flag to the rising sun.

Stuart Watson chiselchips.com