Alone again, again,
down the artery, Highway Five.
Along the smooth green hips
of the hills, the valley,
back to belly,
ass to groin,
thigh to thigh;
but she's got rest stops and gas stations
in her navel.
It's a fast lane movie.
There: a full grown palm tree
trimmed and trussed to the bed
of an eighteen-wheel semi
and there:
a tanker full of liquified sulfur.
At the rest stop,
someone's mom gets the dog
to shit in the designated area.
This highway:
patrolled by aircraft and ravens.
Off the interstate,
out of the caffeinated gasoline nicotine
foot-to-the-floorboard culture,
into the fields and marshes
where white pelicans fly
over walnut orchards and wetlands,
a two lane road between spinach and peaches,
and mobile homes,
single wides and double wides,
alone or in clusters,
farm houses shedding paint
in a nest of cannibalized trucks
and farm equipment
falling apart in weeds and dust.
Hand-painted signs on scraps of plywood say:
owl boxes, well drilling, fresh eggs,
baby goats for sale,
and billboards evangelize:
the Bible, good as gold.
and everywhere the offer
-se venda su casa, pronto.
At the edge of a town
a handsome sign proclaims,
Welcome to Mendota,
Cantaloupe Center of the World
and just below, medallions
for the Elks, Rotary Club and Lions.
The Fourth World,
where the Third World
meets the first one,
raising its food
and cleaning its toilets
and now, new jobs!
as soon as the new prison is done,
incarceration: it's a growth industry.
.....raisins and almonds,
pistachios,
......Armenians.
East, east, east;
to boulder hills and citrus groves,
so like another desert place I want to be.
For now it's just a transparency
over these crossroad clutches
of abandoned cafes and grocers
with faded words on stucco:
ice, meat, liquor, gas.
Mexican kids on bicycles
men in jeans and straw hats,
boxes and bags of oranges for sale
at the stop signs, a dollar a bag.
Give me her sun
and her nectar,
please.
I turn left on Avenue 332.
My uncle Bill the cowboy
and his quiet wife Carol
live down at the end of the road.
I haven't seen them since......... I don't know.
He comes in from the rain,
hangs his barn coat and hat outside.
They smell like manure and cowhide.
We drink black coffee
and talk about picking cotton and grapefruit;
how they tear up your hands
and white folks don't pick anymore.
He talks about the trip he took with Daddy
back in 1944 when he was ten
and they drove to Oklahoma
in dented Ford truck with no driver's side door.
While we talk the television quietly plays
a stock car race in Tennessee
and my cousin Kurt
tells me about his gentle Brahma cows.
I leave and go east again,
up the river road into the foothills
past motels with empty swimming pools,
curio shops, pizza joints, churches,
condos and cabins...
riverside ranchettes.
The oaks and buckeyes in spring
are exploding the meaning of green;
and the red bud?
You'd have to see it.
There used to be a village here
the acorn grinding mortars
hollowed into the granite still are;
just past the informational signs
that describe the decimation
of the tribes who once thrived here.
East and east, up and up
the road climbs like a snake
up the granite shoulders
of the Sierra Nevada.
A light rain turns to snow.
A white road, white sky,
silence.
I need to to see those trees......
To witness for her
who can not be here.
Sequoia,
Sequoia gigantea,
there's one, there's one;
I'm here.
Crunching up a path
beaten through the snow
to the General Sherman Tree.
What a shame to be named
for he who burned his way
through Georgia.
Save your general's names
for tanks and forts, not for
these trees who've
wintered through pharaohs
and caesars and killers
in uniform or suits.
This morning is just for me......
and she who lives in my heart
on the far side of the world.
If the trees could speak,
they would surely sing
about the pleasure of wearing
frosted white on green.
