My mother stops
at the first left
off Shoreline Highway
in Stinson Beach.
It’s an old, broken-down plant nursery,
a big gravel parking lot
with light-pink stones.
Vines grow wild over old
wooden fence posts
and rusting wire.
This is a place that could be anything.
We walk in slowly.
The place is open to the sky in every direction,
salt and wet air,
corroded terraces
covered with cracked plastic sheeting
and piles of collected driftwood,
ornamental and smooth.
A kitchen, bathroom with an old mirror,
and lots of tiny rooms for planting
and storage and everything else.
Space.
My mother walks to the center of the courtyard
and spins. She actually spins.
She does this in moments where things come together.
This, she says, is ours.
Ours. I say it to myself.
We look at each other,
unsure.
We can actually hear the waves crashing down the beach,
the real and the dream, like so much sand and water.