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Cross winds stretch
the play in the steering.
The heart beats faster.

Four miles outside of Palm Springs
surprised by the empty desert
and these mountains

which look like no other mountains.
Gusts of adrenalin.
The road lies on a lucid bed.

Salt cedars break the wind.
A dark brown woman
passes quickly in a Mercedes-Benz.

The road lies.  The land
rolls with the wind.  And still
the indians have remained, hidden

in the sharp canyons
with their multitude of palms,
or at the relinquished hot springs,

and outside the walls of the motel pools,
outside the freight entrance
to Saks's Fifth Avenue.


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The shelling has stopped at Camp Pendleton.
The sign lights up at the Algodon Motel.

After 5pm the county bus passes once
each hour.  Friday evening, blank faces

at the bus stops.  Traffic gradually thins
and it grows dark on the main avenue.

By six, marines with thick necks
fill the counter at the Halfway House Cafe.

They lean against the dark red tiles
at Stan's Liquor.  A small group gathers

while a joint is shared on the sidewalk
between Luigi's Pizza and a palm tree.

The cops pass.  The surfers keep
to their skateboards.  The old men,

the trios of blacks, slip into little bars.
Music drifts from the jukebox.  By nine

there are lines at the Greyhound station.
Pinballs carom off bumpers.  There is time

to be wasted as they wait to use the ticket
and vanish toward a bigger town.


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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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Multi-color pieces of broken glass
illuminate the shoulders.  Each pass

marks a repeat on US 6:   a cycle.
Jackrabbits flatten on the asphalt.

The glass sparkles neatly in perspective.
Morning grows in the horizon beyond white

sand and red.  Green desert brush and yellow.
Beige foothills.  Burgundy mountains.

Decline to incline, each pass marks
a repeat on US 6.  Open range and

range cattle.  We crossed Nevada in
seven hours.  I only had to brake twice.


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Approaching the densely textured,
horizontal strip known as the highway

and sensing the fate of geometrical convergence,
a small herd of pronghorn antelope

splits into immobile panic or the pursued—
frightened by the menace, the slice

of our charging, red Super Beetle.
To this, and the otherwise vacant

and inconsequential morning,
a prairie dog stood

in still witness.  Yes,
there were no fences

until a few miles outside of Alamosa.
On US 285 we passed Rod Steiger

hitchhiking in a southerly direction
and two nuns in a '55 Chevy

with a statuette of Jesus
affixed to the speaker grill.


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Highway 37

Across the mud flats we raced
on a road laid upon brackish waters,
a road too driven for safety and
comfort.  Across the mud flats we went
among the zippy imports and the egrets.



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 Ranches banked along the river
 and alfalfa grew.  Horses

 grazed the sandy stubble
 as rainbirds pointed to

 the lonesome existence
 of western life; morning

 chiaroscuro:   cottonwoods
 breaking the basin where

 hard-looking women drove
 sun-worn and tire-bald, old trucks.


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 Rain streaking the view windows,
 the windshield crying rain.

 Stiffly the fir jerks.
 The tattooed aspens rock

 and quake.  Thunder rolls.
 The wind dies for a minute.

 The creek screams with anticipation.
 It calms the wild rose.


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Yellow bunches of desert grass
align the highway.  The desert

offers its barren expanse:
brown hills and flats, low shrubs.

On US 6 & 50 time stands inchoate,
unchanging.  Time and time immemorial,

we reach the flashpoint of our lives
accompanied by dwarf power poles

and a misplaced predilection—
the Siever Lake bed on our left,

the Wah Wahs rising up behind, brown,
desiccant in the mock cloud cover.


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Snow still retreating from the fissures in
the Sawtooth Mountains.  Dusk still a long

way off; the beauty immediate.  The Salmon River
issues by and sings to us her long, long song.

July extends its kindness
as cow herds drift on broad, distant pastures.

Rising calm.  Rising transparence, distance
corralled.  An angel lifts a softball past

the outfield fence;  the small crowd cheers.
A stony magic fills the umbra.  How vaporous

my daughters are—a trance magic—
as they drift from our sulphur pool.


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The weary traveler travels with a hope
to find something established or to see a place

and feel assurance in the amenable landscape.
He hopes to disarm that which abrogates

his wanderlust just long enough to rest it.
Rest assignates the weary man who sees

dark clouds ahead and a thick rain
obscuring the afternoon.  Longing is a sign

of another desire he might wish to have
revealed:    what prompted this town, what limits

this valley, what passions carried the trail
through here—whose eminence should we
	address?


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Red truck rolling across a great emptiness,
blue coupe following behind, trying

to pass, trying to pass, losing hope.
The Ruby Mountains rising as a backdrop

pretty as a centerfold; the desert light
searching out the late morning shade

like prey:   an honest contender for real life
as we stay giddily close to the yellow line.


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The open road will remind us of many things
some of which are inessential, or unkind toward

the planned itinerary.  Still, they take their time
and their place:  consider the young couple behind us,

unmarried, with a small child, getting drunk
at 10:30 am across from the fairgrounds

where the carnival rides are unfolding; or rather,
the distant sheep, the sagebrush, the hay

baled in a still-green field across this brown valley
—the stalwart waters and regrettable commerce

of machines, plants and mills all seeming to happen
by the lone emigrant grave in a lessened way.

We struggle with what we allow to bother us
and what does not.  We tip the waitress and move on.


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Trucks and cars and trucks with boats; trees
full of peaches, the Sutter Buttes sitting above

the dwarfed orchard—some red, farm machineries
spiraling up clouds of smoke-colored dust;

distant signs of the river; kiwis, kiwis,
cars and trucks and cars with trailers; plums

and walnuts and distant signs of the distant
past—plums and walnuts, plums and apricots,

trucks and cars and argus motorhomes; tractors
under those ancient oaks and metal sheds,

plums and walnuts and apricots and plums
or prunes and peaches and kiwis, kiwis.


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Highway 41

Cattle in the dry creeks
of the cattle-colored hills.
Long, fenceless stretches of open land:
little oaks, outcrops, arroyos,
the wind—old music of the west.


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US 101 (Old California)

Wood-rail bridges, ancient eucalyptus,
oleander dwelling in the median
where two lanes should be four.
Bougainvillea lacing into the palms;
offramps leading to pale haciendas.


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Seiver River

Juniper and piñon cling
to the hillsides.  A little river
meandering through sagebrush.
White cows.  Cottonwoods.
High-desert mountains (spotted
      with pygmy forest).


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Calf Creek

A black and red banded snake
on a red-dirt trail
beside a yellow ochre rock
vanishes in the languid
greenery near the creek's edge.


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Snake River Pastoral

We find occasional pastures neatly
fenced, neatly untended.  Everywhere else
sagebrush spreading above desert grasses.
We see a field of hay recently cut—
perfect geometry—bales awaiting baling.



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