Life Is

Candice Kelsey

a seven-mile stretch
of coastal road
in Carlsbad
California
North County
offering order
& form to the chaos
a gesture
of negotiable lines
paved sketch
astride
the ocean’s face
a reminder
as we drive
at any moment we could
become one
with vastness
the wine-dark voice
of sirens
this
grassy slight inland
village
calls us away
from curiosity
for pilgrim mercies
know
we will seize
the eastward road
toward
predictability
safety & land
never
turning west
toward the wild
terrifyingly
wild salt spray risk
smudged
sand-lick vignette
fools
we trust this coastal road
we miss
the billows we
miss
the beauty.

Candice Kelsey’s work has appeared in such journals as Poet Lore, The Cortland Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. She published a successful trade paperback with Da Capo Press, made it to the quarter finals of the 2017 Able Muse Prize for Poetry, was a finalist for Poetry Quarterly's 2018 Rebecca Lard Award, and recently was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. An educator of 20 years' standing with her M.A. in literature from LMU, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.