A scent of salt...our life

It was recently my birthday,another year has passed,another year older. I was thinking about the notion of "witnessing of my life ", the pondering of what is recorded, remembered,absorbed of our essence with the passing of infinite unfathomable time,what remains to be said of us, told of us,seen of us,felt of us, smelled us,touched of us with each year that passes or when we are physically no longer. I thought of the momentous, heartfelt ,miraculous moments of my life,those that I love and treasure,but we are all but fleeting specs of dust in the galaxy of time. I thought of the expansive sea and sky,the monumental mountains which I imagined for a moment witnesses all, but is evanescent as I am as well. This poem by Phillip Levine speaks to me, that
even that which we imagine witnesses all is but fleeting as well.



Our Valley,by Phillip Levine
We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.