rd king DOT net : In California

In California

Farmland Near Point Sal


There, the earth wells up and rises
in a long, lateral hump—a green hump
with drainages and hillsides worn smooth
and gentle by aeons of weathers:  time:
time, winds and waters which have led
to a lifelessness distinguished by nothing,
no trees or rocks or even a chaparral
to upset the basal undulations
of the land's skin as it stretches
across the old uplift of land—not even
livestock grazing on the bright, new grass.

A white parallelogram floats at the base—
the north-facing roof of a barn.  A house
sits nearby:  it, too, painted white
and stern-looking, and old, able to grow
where other woods have been unable to grow.
And before this lies a long, wide-open field.
There is cabbage growing in furrows of great
      volume
and a mass that finally reduces itself
to one:  there is cabbage growing
in the distant half of the field.

Nearest the road, the land is once again
empty.  Here the field has been plowed
in the denomination of furrows.  And even though
each furrow is detectable to the eye,
they too, like the cabbage, tend
to reduce themselves to a single vision—
a moniker that is quickly precluded
into a larger aspect, a generic whole.

What you see, aside from a beauty, is this:
an old fence stands above the roadside ditch,
some old posts and barbed-wire, blackbirds.
A wide rectangle of fertile brown with darker,
horizontal shadows stands before the green
palette of cabbage.  The light diffused, soft—
the cabbage a weak rainbow of green
and green only, until your eyes move
to the grass which glows like an alien thing
upon the hillsides below the colorless heaven.




 
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Collected Poetry

In California

Farmland Near Point Sal
