Sonoma County Literary Update

December 1, 2025

Hello Sonoma County poets and poetry enthusiasts.

Here’s wishing Happy Holidays to those who celebrate! This month I’d like to share a poem of mine that celebrates Sonoma County’s ecology. “Baylands,’ which first appeared in my book Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences, is about the Sonoma Land Trust’s Sears Point Wetlands Restoration Project. This is not only an ecopoem, or poem about the ecology, but also a documentary poem. The documentary angle is present in facts taken from news media and scientific sources. I was present at the event described, so this could also be called a poem of personal witness. Readers may note an element of mythology in the poem in references to a princess and a frog, making clear my position that, in the human narrative, science and mythology aren’t mutually exclusive. The poem speaks to the way in which we, the human species, write our story into the land, and rewrite that story, with tractors and excavators. As a civil engineer, I have a special fondness for “yellow iron,” a slang term for construction equipment such as the bulldozer and excavator. Here’s the poem:

Baylands

In the last dry moments of a hayfield, small waves in San Pablo Bay
chuckled and rubbed up against the levee as they had for decades
without moving more than a few shovelfuls of soil. But the bay
was about to reclaim the land, with gravity on its side, and with
the rev of a diesel engine. One swipe of its boom and the yellow
long reach excavator breached the levee. With a thirsty
sound a slurry of bay water and mud rushed onto the land.

An earlier generation preferred firm land to soupy sea and marshes,
feed hay and beef cattle to ephemeral egrets, but children bring
to this ceremony binoculars and eager eyes seeking those egrets, and
bald eagles: a species once balanced near death where we balance.
Draining the marsh way back when made sense at the time, though,
truth be told, the bay seeped up under the feet of grazing steer while
the land sank downward. Pumps kept the land dry but cost cold cash.

Now the bay has re-claimed the hayfield claimed from the sea: a wash
of a transaction. All day tractors cut hay, excavators move earth,
writing our story into the land. Sometimes the princess is saved;
sometimes the princess saves the frog. In this plot twist the marshland
has been restored to the frog by yellow iron—the excavator—
the diesel vibrations thrilling the nerves, the heart. Soundly asleep,
may children’s dreams do the work of a hundred shovels tonight.

____

Coming up in December, I’m thrilled to be one of the readers at a performance of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, produced by Sonoma County poet and musician Timothy Williams and presented by Timothy, Anika Snyder, Chappell Holt, and myself. The event will take place at Barrel Proof Lounge in Santa Rosa on Tuesday December 9th at 5 PM.

Also, looking forward to January, I will lead a workshop on writing poems about Petaluma history, hosted by Petaluma Historical Library and Museum, featuring a tour led by Executive Director Stacey Atchley. Stay tuned for details.

Have you written a poem in response to one of my workshops or writing prompts? I’d enjoy hearing from you at dssocolaureate@gmail.com.

Dave Seter
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2024-2026
dssocolaureate@gmail.com

________

Archives of previous Poet Laureate columns may be found here for 2012,  2013, 2014,  2015, 2016-2017, 2018-2020, 2020-2022, 2022-2024 and 2024-2026.