US INTERSTATE 5

Some people find

Interstate Highway 5

Boring. Not me, I

like the contours

of the hills,

the smooth shapes

that so resemble

a sleeper who

lies dreaming

on her side.

Thousand-acre orchards

of peaches, pistachios,

raisin vineyards,

walnuts, and nectarines 

Tumbleweed and

prairie scrub where

the land looks

as endless as the sea.

Where the owls nest

underground and

kit foxes hunt

kangeroo rats on

moonlit nights.

No towns adjacent

to the twin ribbons

of pavement, just

metastatic clusters

of Chevron, Shell and Arco.

Each station with

a mini market stocked

with six dozen brands

of energy drinks,

sodas, flavored

sparking waters

packaged sandwiches,

microwave burritos

and sausage, egg and cheese

muffins or biscuits.

Roller hotdogs, trucker caps,

cheap cowboy hats.

smokeless tobacco,

vape cartridges and

the scent of stale coffee.

Endless chains of trucks.

Classic retail may be dying

but all that stuff still gets

sold online and Fedex, UPS,

and Amazon are busy

hauling it from port to town.

It all moves at eighty plus.

Roll at seventy and you

get rolled over by Hondas

Fords, or Chevys. Volvos.

Toyotas or Teslas.

The California Aqueduct

snakes back and forth

beside the freeway,

fed by water that flowed

in rivers before the

cities and the farms

got so thirsty. There

are largemouth bass,

carp and catfish in the

concrete channel.

I wonder if they get bored.

Knives

 I’m feeling

in the drawer

for knives

I can not see.

I could’ve been

wiser about that.

But here I am.

Careful.

Wanting to caress

a hand grenade,

something from

the Gospel that dispels

simultaneously:

all the threats and bullshit,

executive orders,

and delusions.

Embers

The angry, orangey worm

gnaws the manzanita root

makes a smoldering tunnel

through the soil recently

baked like a scone.

Grows fiery wings

and rides the wind,

glides gently down

to eat a house. 

I often dream without sleeping

My 4 a.m. head was crammed

with a dancing flame and fishes

that swam from cloud to cloud.

and a long ago naked plunge

in the pool of a New Mexico flash flood

fed by a rust-colored cataract.

Our bodies were speckled

and dusted with orange

when it dried on our skin.

And once again, for what

must be the ten-thousandth time,

that warm day one spring

when walking out a ranch road

on the green flank of the mountain

the Spanish named for the devil,

I saw a huge valley oak covered

with fresh sprouting leaves

trembling in the breeze.

Except there was no breeze

and the leaves were singing.

It was all finches, finches,

an orchestra of goldfinches

on their way north to nest and feast

on the seeds of grasses and thistles. 

Meeting for worship, Antigua Guatemala

the black-scaled lizard

clinging to the whitewashed trunk,

-black beans on tortillas

distant firecrackers

crackle like raindrops on leaves.

grackles sweetly sing.

yesterday the devil

was burned, today the virgin

is honored with bombs.

we sit in circles,

patiently wait for spirit’s

voice to fill our hearts.

english or spanish,

ki’che, kaqchikel, or mam

bomb blasts are banished.

Mr Ward

Mr Ward lived across the street

in a converted garage surrounded

by a wildly overgrown garden.

A few charred timbers lingered

under ivy that covered the

foundation of the house

where his wife had died

when the house burned down

some years before.

He never rebuilt it.

Mr Ward worked the night shift

at the Hamm’s brewery on

Bryant near Seals Stadium.

The Giants were playing there

while the new park at Candlestick

was under construction.

We could see the cranes

from the the street in front

of our house on the hill

in Brisbane.

Mr Ward would

sometimes come out

to join us, tell us stories

about people who had

lived up here on the hill.

Like the man who had lived in

the house that we now rented.

After a landslide next to the house

a riot of poison oak had erupted.

He cut it all down and burned it.

Stood close to the pyre

tending it. Breathed too much

of the smoke, which inflamed

his lungs badly.

Hospitalized,

but I don’t recall if Mr Ward said

that he died. just wanted us

to know, not to burn poison oak.

One day, as we standing

out in the street, a garter snake

crawled out onto the road.

I had never seen a real live snake

before.

It was beautiful, red and black

checkered sides, cinnamon and turquoise

around its head, a pale green stripe

down center of its back.

Mr Ward picked it up so I could

look at it. I turned to Mommy

and asked if I could keep it.

She laughed and said No,

not this one, maybe another one.

Mr Ward put the snake down

in the shrubs at the edge of his

garden and the snake quickly

disappeared. He said it guards

his yard from pests and varmints.

Later on, Mommy said Mr Ward

was a hermit. Because he lived in

that converted garage and

didn’t rebuild the house because

he wife had died in the fire.

I told her that when I grew up

I wanted to be a hermit too.

And have a wild garden with snakes

and work nights at Hamm’s

so I could play with my snakes

in the afternoon.

We moved away from Brisbane

a few months later to a brand new

subdivision in  Lucas Valley.

Mr Ward gave us a Century plant,

the kind that can go decades

before itt blooms. Which it did

years later.

And I caught my first

snake there, a huge gopher snake,

long enough to wrap twice around

my waist like a belt. I brought it

to the back door. When Mom

opened the door I said, “You

promised I could keep one.”

And so I did, the first of many.