Red yellow, goldless dust,
tindery, straw grass
the color of wheat or worse,
mats the foothills
whiskered with thirsty trees.

We cruise on relentless
yellow-striped tar strips,
snaking over and around these dry hills,
under fierce blue air,
unfiltered sun,

passing clapboard shacks
and rusted machines,
tired mining towns,
with elevations higher
than their populations,
that still hear echoes of the boom,
the ghost of Twain
and his Jumping Frog.

We stop once to buy corn
from a young Latino man
under an unbrella-ed wagon,
fighting a hundred-degree afternoon;
dewy sweat weeps
from cool husks in the heat.

We outpace a tractor
that tills only dust,
and watch a small herd of cattle
languidly graze by an irrigation pond,
a striking swath of blue
in the midst of red clay and straw,
as though a wet piece of sky
has fallen to the ground.

10/08/2001

Posted on 10/08/2001
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