600 miles to see a tree

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.