At Pine Cove

by Andrena Zawinski

After trailing the wooded misty path

to the cove, feet sliding on wet sands downhill,

after watching abalone poachers rise

wet suited from the waters with their sea troves,

we brave the climb back, steadying ourselves

on thick branches and each other.

Back to the inn’s rickety writing table

a pot of market soup-of-the-day waits

to be warmed, wedge of peppered cheese

and crusty baguette on the board,

Anderson Valley wine picked up on the way in

along ribboning S curves that carried us here.

We slip into oversized cable knits,

sale priced at the local mercantile, settle into

the blustery night opening a door to the sky’s

threat of storm, where we will remain inside

safe and dry. Just two women getting ready

for dinner in lodging near the sea,

getting ready to drift off to sleep, wrapped in

a sash of fog and the warmth of each other,

old dog at our feet already snoring under the table

where a vase hugs three stems of fragrant Stargazers,

their musky heads tilted the way women

stop to talk along coastal garden trails,

ears of the cove listening in.

* * * * *

"At Pine Cove" was first published by isacoustic.

Andrena Zawinski is a veteran educator and activist poet whose work has received accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. Her latest collection is Landings. She has two previous award winning books: Something About and Traveling in Reflected Light. She runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com. Her poems, “When Paris Was a Woman” and “Never the Right Recipe” previously appeared at Writing in a Woman’s Voice.