That stretch of coast like the soft spotin your self, the heart of your self I callyour soul. That feeling that comes there, when fog settlesso truly I know I am walking insidea cloud. Intangible. Tangible. Bothat once. Sweetheart, I need to tell you somethingafter we finish, tonight, with this dinnerI’m preparing—rainbow chard wilted in oilwith shallots and pepitas, herb-rubbed chickenalready roasting. Even on these hot days,far from the cool coast of California, when I’m with you,I am inside such a cloud. This is how I knowI won’t ever believe in heaven if heaven isn’t righthere, with you. Our sunflowers keep coming back,year after year after year, since that first yearwe drove seeds under our new yard’s soft soil.That, dear heart, is it. It is the softness I needto thank you for. I’d be lost without thatpart of you that eases up enough to let me in.Then closes back around me. For years,on the edge of California’s coast, ship after shipafter European ship sailed past. An inletkept safe inside a cloud. Safe the sweet smellof California buckeye and dusty green sage. Safethe spineflower, checker lily, blue blossom. Unharmedthe little native bees and yellow-faced bumble beeswho skip from flower to flower. Unharmedthe coast buckwheat, and the fiery skipperand gossamer-winged butterflies who need buckwheatto survive. Unharmed the lumbering grizzly.Unharmed, until thinned fog let ships in, the snakesand mountain lions too. You’ve lived long enough,sweetheart. You’ve paid attention to your history.You know what some people will do if let into the part of your self you spent so long protecting.But you showed me this anchorage. Those soft brownshoulders. The headlands. Here I am. So much in bloom!And me, with you, in all this soft wild buzzing.(This poem originally appeared in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World.)