The Making of "Rain on Cabrillo"

A poetry collection

Photo by the author, Mark Tulin, at E. Cabrillo Boulevard, Santa Barbara.

Writing a poetry collection began for me on a May morning in 2019. The time was approximately 11 a.m. I was sitting in my parked car on Cabrillo Boulevard, gazing at the Pacific Ocean. Cabrillo is a boulevard along the scenic shoreline in Santa Barbara, California.

Then the sun turned to rain. What a beautiful image, I thought. The raindrops slid down the windshield, making the palm trees in the distance a soothing blur.

I wrote a poem about what it was like to experience that moment.

Rain on Cabrillo

I pull over on Cabrillo
to watch the rain
through my car window,
a blur of swaying palm trees
and cloud-burst windy skies,
an impression by chance,
an engraving on a wet afternoon
into a waterfall of glory.
Pouring rain is a haze of simplicity,
subdued and opulent,
channeling liquid energy
into one narrow moment
of youth and purity.

I published the poem in a small literary magazine called The Local Train Magazine.

In the collection, I wrote poetry about egrets, sandpipers, pelicans, skies, mountains, and the ocean's roar. I posted many of these poems in online journals and anthologies, including Medium sites such as Scrittura, Gardening, Birding, and Outdoor Adventure, and Being Known.