rd king DOT net : In California

In California

Summer Nights in Roseville


Her father, with little coaxing
and no apparent feeling of regret,
would hand me the keys to his old, four-door
for reasons that were both functional and absurd
and then something would begin in the subsequent
evening light.  I would watch his face.  I would see
his smile and each time recall
the sincerity of what he had said
the last time we entered
with solemnity and grace
into this arcane ceremony—even after
we crossed the tracks and left old town
and drove out of town and into the heat,
now exposed and big and fiery as we lay
sprawled across the vinyl seat, already
confounded, and made anxious by the presence
of the weed-filled creek.  The cinderblock wall
the developers had erected with precision
and the hope of utility was like a thing
we could not fix in our lives.  It bordered
our road that went nowhere, and stood witness
to the sidewalk no one found occasion to use.

Robin Annalee turned the radio on low, fell
back in her seat, and for some still time
looked across the still-perfect fence
that kept something contained in the flat,
empty, and enormous field that ran unchecked
across the blue road.  Grass grew knee high
and in June was already long dead and yellow.
The only thing that seemed brute and captured
were the colossal pylons striding across the great
      openness—
and even they must have been slightly amused
by the barbed-wire and the neat cinderblock.

      Like farmers
we kept somberly hidden in the dashboard the remains
of a much-used hemp-bud cigarette, which she lit
with only the glow from the lighter, and
from which we each shared three moot and hissing
      hits.
Robin Annalee turned the radio down lower
until the song we waited for began, knowing
a song would come; knowing the wait
could be strange and pierce us with indifference;
it could throb with heat and be awkward, it could
extend far, far beyond our horizon—until then
we stared at the pylons and let the sun go down,
wondering why the heat always failed to leave
with it—sweat running down our necks, sweat
collecting on our bellies.  Too hot to touch.  Too...

When the radio could not be made louder
without paranoia settling in, Robin Annalee
cut fat wedges with a knife from her mother's drawer
from a lemon pulled from her mother's tree.  Her
      father
kept a half pint of gold beneath the seat:  tequila
that tasted like dishwater and salt.  Time then
wandered by.  In minutes, in hours, in listless
      eternities
through which my one wish was not to feel my heart
      beat:
I would be reminded of how good a breeze could feel;
I would talk to Robin Annalee until the floor mats
left patterns on our soles, our faces heat-worn
and lovely.  When the sky turned orange and idle
Anna would tell me her dreams in a soft voice.
The pasture would confront me; I'd want her
and not much would matter after that.




 
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Collected Poetry

In California

Summer Nights in Roseville
