THE SUTRO BATHS
BY RYAN TEITMAN
These latticework arches of steel
are Sutro’s Il Gesu—his mother church—
housing pristine baths behind glass
the color of rosemary.
1896: six saltwater pools, men and women clad
in bathing caps and one-pieces.
One woman dallies on the stairs, grazing
the water with her toe.
Now, the baths are ruins.
The shoreline listens
to the sea’s quiet,
the same way
children listen
with cupped hands
to their parents arguing
in the next room.
A model being photographed
in the ruins balances
on her toe’s knuckle,
posed like a dancer,
the wind catching her dress
and spinning her slowly
like a weathervane.
These ruins,
gloved in moss,
festooned with the red
of wildflowers,
are altars
in this small valley
carved into the cliff side.
How the hawk,
in her hunt above us,
hovers on the updrafts,
achieving the perfection
we only imagine—
to fall and be held up
without having to choose
between the two,
is the kind of grace
we can live in here.
No better sea bathing
in the world, the program reads—
a quarter for the day
and children free on Sundays.
From the lip of the hillside,
I take a picture of the model,
who’s stripping off her dress
to reveal a Victorian bathing suit
underneath, and tucking
her long, black hair
into a bathing cap.
She runs her hands
down her legs
like a boatwright testing the curve
of a keel.
The hawk folds her wings
and dives,
but rises from the hillside
with nothing. In an hour,
they are both gone.
I walk through the ruins, past a sign
that warns:
People have been swept
from the rocks and drowned.
I stand on the shoreline wall.
The sea wants nothing
but for me to fall
and keep falling;
the waves, like bulls, crash
against the wall but their bellowing
becomes a mist of salt.
They won’t take me today.
In the distance, a container ship
crests the horizon. It’s carrying
something for me, I know.
How I can tell—that’s another story.
