Bodega Bay
by Sheila Sondik
The dunes changed shape every year
and every year the change surprised us.
We flew kites, snapped bull kelp like whips.
The giant shrub ate our shuttlecocks and wiffle balls.
We found an LP of Just So Stories in a closet
and played it for our daughters.
The great, gray-green, greasy Limpopo River,
all set about with fever-trees…
We’d sit in the tiny, whitewashed porch,
and watch the broad creek riffle in the breeze.
Only here, we indulged in saltwater
taffy and 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles.
Great blue herons stalked Salmon Creek
while ospreys dive-bombed for their dinner.
Next door, a mysterious round structure
gave off a counterculture scent.
Lines of pelicans back from the brink
coasted over the surly gray-green Pacific.
Farther up the dunes, I poured sand
from plastic bucket to sandmill
and watched the spinning paddlewheel
with a dumb joy I still can’t fathom.
Previously published in Williwaw Journal Issue 3 (Spring, 2018).
PAINTING: Bodega Bay by ClaudiaSavageArt. Prints available at etsy.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sheila Sondik is a poet and printmaker in Bellingham, Washington. Her poetry has appeared in CALYX, Kettle Blue Review, The Raven Chronicles, Floating Bridge Review, frogpond, and many other journals. She has degrees from Harvard College and California College of the Arts. Egress Studio Press published her chapbook Fishing a Familiar Pond: Found Poetry from The Yearling in 2013. Her artwork and links to her poetry are available at sheilasondik.com
Silver Birch Press 
Bodega Bay is a gorgeous poem that warmed my heart on a memorable drizzly Southern California morning. The “great green Limpopo River1 read to my kids years ago. Thank you!
So glad my poem elicited warm memories!
Thanks for these, painting and poem. I grew up in San Francisco and still miss the North California coast, walking the cool, sunny or foggy beaches and cliff side overlooks north and south. You remind me to revisit these special places.
Thank you for reading and bringing your own memories to the poem.