Andrena Zawinski

Against the Wind,
Pantoum for Angel Island
San Francisco, CA

"If you come to a land with no ancestors
to bless you, you have to be your own
ancestor..."
--from Riding into California, Shirley Geok-lin Lim

A Chinese couple charts family landings at the map, passes time,
as the Angel Island Ferry presses into the choppy mouth of the bay
where sailboats bow down in a struggle against a whistling wind
and geese follow their own long necks through the mantle of fog,

as the Angel Island Ferry enters the choppy mouth of the bay
where Miwoks once came with long poles in thin reed boats
past geese following their own necks through the mantle of fog,
where they came for salmon and sea fowl, for leaf and seed.

The Miwoks swept in with long poles in thin reed boats,
where Spanish sailors mapped and named the island and inlets,
where there was salmon and sea fowl, seed and leaf and root,
and an infantry on foot took aim to strike down the tribes,

where Spanish sailors mapped and named the island and inlets,
where Chinese paper sons engraved poems on wood barrack walls,
where infantry on foot took aim at and struck down the tribes.
Like pear blossoms already fallen, pity the branches in late spring,

the Chinese paper sons engraved upon wood barrack walls,
A flickering lamp keeps the body company above the bluffs and cove.
Like pear blossoms already fallen, pity the branches in late spring.
The sad person sits alone, leans by a window, a paper son wrote,

and a flickering lamp keeps a body company above bluffs and cove
where sailboats bow down in a struggle against a whistling wind
and the sad person sits alone, leans by a window to track the moon,
and a Chinese couple charts family landings at the map, passes time.

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“Against the Wind” was a prize winner in the San Francisco
Dancing Poetry Competition of 2000.