Tell-Tale Signs

Just steps from where the coast road cuts
its sectioned asphalt bleached by the sun
& fogs & vibroned tire treads of who knows how many
cars and trucks hurtling into the mist where
we parked & stumbled to find a steep
crooked sand path down from panoramic
cliffs to a hidden beach where giant rocks
studded with barnacles & mussels stood shuddering
in the surf & I first saw the Floating Zendo
so deciduously that time with Esmeralda Twang
& Creeping Jesus so that I had to blink
to remember my name & offshore breezes whispered
into the vast unobserved platitude of ocean haze
something that was indicated or that could only be
read upon the rusted dashboard dials of a derelict Buick
rotting & sunken decapitated in a ragged seaside vacant lot
adjacent to the tideflat as in ancient crime scene photographs
where detectives stand & a uniformed patrolman points
the lurid implication of what lies hidden in the weeds
as we might gather ourselves as evidence
the footprints in wet sand just this moment long ago
erased by the waves