rd king DOT net : In California

In California

Rivers, Boats, and Cities


Made special by that mottled sheet on which it occurs,
so much can happen on water.  But mainly
boats race by.  We watch them keenly, commenting.
For a while we are attentive to the riders in the boats
only to decide that skier and driver are the two
      regarded positions.
When the skier falls a red flag is raised in the speedboat.
Black Labs take to the water.  Everyone laughs.
When they see us it is two people sitting on the riverbank.

The cut-off jeans fray further up her thighs.
In the new grass, insects bite our sockless ankles.
Now that we are watching the carp mate
in a murky inlet it seems most unusual
and we wonder why.  Why here?  It's dirty.
And I catch myself staring hard at the dense, lush,
prurient landscape.  I can hear birds in the trees.
I can feel the river hug the bank and drag it.

It is no longer clear to me what the days ask
to be.  They are older now, touchy as adolescents,
and wish to be viewed in their own private way.
I know.  The leaves are back on the cottonwoods.
The river seems fatter, more ready to bear
anything in the way of good luck to anyone
willing to ask for it, willing to toss a coin
or their current luck into the slow, gray-green water.
Why would it be a river?  And the boats so geometric?

The little oaks sit like cats on the rolling hills.
There is a wish in what I see drawn toward the
      elementary.
The way in which the light wants to keep so close
to itself and to the color it finds, bothers me.
I can't stop noticing.  I see how it separates
into all the little scenes—her breasts, a cut foot,
the engines.  It wasn't much use, really, to stare
at the other bank of the river.  It was spring there,
      too.
The leaves were so green on the cottonwoods,
so new.  I could distinguish the sexes.
I could see the discernible difference.

Yet through the gray pine I can see the silhouette
of a bulldozer move.  The land is getting more
      expensive,
especially near the river and the interstate.
It will take some getting used to—to finding
a business center on the pastoral horizon.
(White disk grows brighter in the dusk.  The music
      moves.)
But there is nothing defiant in the way
these cows graze while the barns continue to rot.

In the Tuesday morning paper I found
a photo of downtown Reno, and one of the harbor skyline
      of Singapore.
It was quite a surprise.  It left me
feeling this, that, et cetera, all day long.




 
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Collected Poetry

In California

Rivers, Boats, and Cities
