Winter envies Spring.
Hail beats the blossoms
off the plums. Pink petals
dot the pavement.
What it looks like when
you’re sprawled on the gravel:
all the trash looks monumental.
weed forests. bottle caps.
broken toys.
Looking through the window
at smoked chickens
hanging by their feet,
I see roses and dragons
across the street.
A chair sits in the empty lot
next to the crumbling shop
on Welcome Street.
Christmas decor hangs
on street light poles:
removal three weeks past due.
A sign warns that it is
unlawful to pass a school bus
stopped for children.
Across the road,
the sign I see,
says _HELL.
Guns and auto parts
buy, sell, trade, repair
or layaway. Bikes and ammo.
Daytime barflies catching
January sun against a wall.
The empty concrete reservoir
looks like a desert plain on Mars.
Some one has left a single
low top canvas tennis shoe.
When I sprawl on my belly,
the city disappears.
You know those pixelated things
that look like a scrambled checkerboard,
you point your smartphone camera
at them and it takes you to somewhere
and loads up a menu or a webpage?
It’s called QR code.
They are so ubiquitous that I wondered
there must be hundreds of millions
of them, so how many unique things
is it possible to code?
I went to Google and started to type
“What are…….”
Before I finished typing, beyond “What are”,
search results appeared.
Mostly Covid-related questions
but also in the top searches:
What are capers and What are hemorrhoids?
Interesting. Is there some kind
of global connection?
So I tried a new search, again
with just open-ended “what are…”
valence electrons, primary colors,
bonds, human rights and so on.
So naturally, being the curious person I am,
I tried some other non specific queries.
“Where is….” generates these results:
where is your heart located?
where is Wendy Williams?
where is euphoria set?
where is Yellowstone filmed?
and my favorite: where is the?
where is the?
OK, how about something grander,
something more essential and eternal.
Like “What if?
Resulting in:
What if it’s us, a novel
What if God was one of us, a song
And the best one is:
Serious scientific answers
to absurd hypothetical questions.
It’s a book. And a website!
Now we’re barking up my tree!
For example:
What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool?
or Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?
What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched
at 90 percent of the speed of light?
Would a toaster still work in a freezer?
I can see that I’m not going to get much done today.
The road climbs like a snake
up the flank of the volcano
in the pre dawn dark.
At the summit, we join
the gathered throng,
a couple hundred strong,
draped in beach towels
and quilted snow garb.
Flip-flops, sneakers
Cargo shorts and
Patagonia fleece.
Sports team hoodies.
The crater below crowded
with cumulus clouds
hunched like an army
of monsters and giants.
A boy dressed head to toe
in blue Goretex
sleeping on the rocks,
belongs to a tour group
wearing jackets emblazoned
with an emblem and motto:
“do good have fun
save the planet”.
A sliver of sun
crests the horizon,
spears the bowl
of monsters and giants,
turning them back
into the sculpted
vapor of towering clouds.
Now is the moment
when a Hawaiian man
winds through the watchers
chanting the day
into existence.
I think so,
it feels like that.
Like the birth
of the planet.
When God said,
let there be light.
and He saw that it was good
and He divided the light
from darkness.
The clouds are stained
with gold and fire.
Cellphones pointed
at the flaming skyscape,
we gasp and kiss
and touch each other.
The mother of the sleeping boy
laughs as she wakes him,
she doesn’t want him to miss
this beauty and glory.
some battered aluminum cookware and ancient packs,
the kind with skinny straps that dig into shoulders, warm
coats and fishing gear and that's all that fits in a '67 MG
Midget. Besides some instant oatmeal, dried fruit and coffee.
We better catch some fish or we're going to be hungry, but
Dad is good at that, he'll teach me where they hide and how
to catch them. Off into the valley after sunset, it's dark but
still hot, the top is down and we smell the irrigation water and
alfalfa out beyond the towns, the scent of meat and fried
potatoes in the yellow pools of light along the boulevards.
Orange groves silhouettes in black against the roots of the Sierra.
A sudden bend in the road catches him going much too fast
but we get through, sliding just a bit. How did he do that? With
hands and foot just so, a balance on the cusp of chaos and control.
It's cooler as we climb the spiny ridge leading to the mountains
dead rattlesnakes and squirrels on the pavement, the scent
of bear clover and cedar perfume the nose, the mountains
announce the altitude. A greeting in the dark, warm and pungent.
We don't talk much, long silences yawn between his stories of
prior trips: wading rivers, sliding down ravines through brush,
riding bikes up from the valley with his best friend, Bud.
The hot rod ford he had and the time it boiled over and scalded
his forehead. The scar that still shows if you know where to look.
midnight: We throw our bags down in a campground where all
the campers are asleep, embers in the fire pits fading into ashes.
At six we rise and hike before the sun or campers are awake,
to the stream above the canyon where he's been successful.
Dark pools and willows, bright cascades between the boulders.
Cast into the edges, let the hook and bait drift into the quiet places
where they shelter from the current. Like a conveyor belt he says.
And we did catch trout and ate them fried in butter with sage and lemon.
Made a bed of leaves and pine needles covered with a tarp that
crackled when we laced our hands behind our heads, staring at the
galaxies and stars against the black. The universe seemed deeper
in the mountain air. Sunday morning we walked back down the canyon,
drove into the heat, the sun bleary through the bug-smeared windshield.
At a crossroads store we stopped for cokes, smelling of fish and sweat,
sunburnt, wrapped within our silence, within our own returns to Mondays,
all the ones that march relentlessly like ants carrying our lives in pieces while we wait for Friday night promises. For magic to arrive on Saturday beside a stream.
at the academy of science museum
recently, we saw poison arrow frogs.
about the size of an M&M
with a peanut. same colors too.
acid blue, electric orange, warn us:
don’t eat me, you’ll be sorry.
there used to be yellow-legged frogs
in the creek across the road.
tree frogs in the pastures
of the dairy on the other side
of the old road. Where
Roseanne Olivera lived.
We caught frogs together.
Just to look at for a spell.
Roseanne didn’t kiss ‘em
although she had a froggy voice.
I wanted her to kiss me,
but I was too shy to ask.
Frog and salamander populations
are dwindling. All around the world.
Some may be gone forever
some already are.
I want to hike up to the pond
on Mt Burdell where the tree frogs mate.
Hundreds, maybe thousands
singing. all at once. a chorus.
They were still there the last time
I hiked up there, I pray that they
will be there again, when the rains
fill the pond and flood the grass.
Whiskered styles locked in the sixties
on guys who drive trucks or build houses
with their wives or girlfriends oozing out of
tank tops and jeans, dangly earrings.
A lot of guts hanging over belts, with
sixteen ounce beers in each hand.
Bud junior or sis balance a box
of jalapeno-covered, velveeta-draped nachos,
floppy burgers, and wax cups of Coca cola.
It's carnival of excess: horsepower, bulging bellies,
and big-ass engines. Big colors, big heat and
flag-flapping tongues. Cleavage and leather
and the shattering noise of racing engines.
It's the smell of grilled hamburger smoke
and sunblock on sun-grilled skin,
cheap perfume and exhaust fumes.
Popcorn and spilled beer.
A tinny anthem from out-of-sync speakers
has everyone standing solemnly after the announcer
mouths some platitudes about far away troops
and some legendary driver or team owner
who's now dead, this event is a memorial to him.
Then it's time for what we came for,
to see the snarling bright-painted monsters
sliding around the hard-packed clay oval
at a hundred and twenty miles per hour.
A delicate thing, controlling a beast,
finding a balance on the edge between
fast and upside down. One that gets crossed
a few times. And everyone stands,
peering the wreck until the driver
climbs out and waves his hand.
Then there's a cheer and a shaking of heads
and an exodus to the beer and concession stands.
It'll take a few minutes to clear up the mess,
get it all sorted, restarted. Might be good time
to go take a piss, have a smoke or buy a souvenir.
Swap stories about that time when Jimmy so and so
flipped or when Steve the crazy one went over the wall.
It's always the same, the drama. Cars fly down the track.
Little kids climb and play under the grandstand
and the teenagers troll the aisles and the stairs
to see and be seen; it's not all about cars to them.
Or to me. It’s the sweat-stained hats embroidered
with flames. The warm summer nights and the smells.
The parade of unselfconscious flesh, the illusion of
a simpler life, where a Saturday night at the track
seems to provide all the satisfaction, the vicarious
thrill, the circus of noise, with heroes and villains
all played out in four hour doses of speed.
Then it's time to drive home under the stars
just as alone as I was when I got there, tired and
red-eyed, with track dust in my hair, as baffled as ever by life.
I bet all of the rest of them are too, because no one's
that simple, it just feels like that at the races.
