tar

stalking blue belly lizards

basking on the boulder piles

jutting through bleached september

barley grass and yellow-flowered tarweed

my hands are stained and scented,

sticky with the sap of these weeds

that bloom after all the other green

has faded, smelling like the power poles

that sprout beside my california home.

i pressed my waffled footprint

in the noon-melted street

left my mark on history

for a while, i'm sure it's gone

but i still wear high-topped sneakers

and i've trod the gravelled mojave

where the creosote bushes spread in rings

expanding through the millenia

browsed by tortoises in spotty shade

and scented like those lost summer

weeds and streets and power poles

like the ties beneath the railroad

that i wandered, fuming, dreaming

and remembering the smell of tar.

a family sits fishing from the boulders,

the shoulders of this old navy island

a pier beside the cove where

the china clippers flew and now

a wooden minesweeper sways

beside the reeking pilings

the scent of history and flowers

pinching and tickling, remembering

those bleached september hills