There is a sheen of traffic noise
on the expressway—not a sound so much
as the absence of sleep. Dutch
settlers with their staffs, Van Brunt and Van Nuyse,
ended journeys and began, pancake blue hats poised
to slip from their heads into the wan dust
of coast roads like maps, followed their wanderlust
here, tracks of salt, cheese rinds tossed to porpoises
in the bay, arriving fires in the damp
night, scrounging the ground for good flat rocks,
leaving metal, bones, broken bits, fine china, hoists
of rope cached deep below these cement ramps’
unpresent hum. 3 A.M. The digital clock
glows. Out my window clings the moon—mum as an oyster.