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Poetry

(rd king dot net)
poetry and digital art

American Summer

Poems written while traveling.

Highway 156 


The orchards give way
at the base of the hills

to ranches and sweet-eyed cows
and the dry, sandy bed of the arroyo.

The heat finds nowhere to go.
It backs up, waits

at the mouth of the incline.
The semis rock and shift

to a lower gear.  The hills
start rolling and I see

that golden grasses cover them
like a hide with chocolate-brown patches.

And they keep to this rolling
all the way through Pacheco Pass.

Oak trees sprawl on the hillsides
and in the little ravines.

A few bulls rest in the shade.
Nothing else breaks

the beautiful monotony
except insect bodies

striking the windshield
as the road snakes in.




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