9-26-23
It’s my birthday! I think I am going to treat myself with another poem. Or maybe a little bit of creative writing. We will see where the day takes us. And, gosh darn willing the creek don’t rise, I might do this for the next couple of days.
On these mornings, when the sun is a friend you are waiting for,
driving down a backroad away from a town whose whole population
feels like they could fit in the palm of your head, or maybe on one of
the new freckles given to you by the semi-tamed Central Valley,
I cherish the darkness. My exhaustion caresses me as my partner
sleeps in the passenger’s seat, mouth open, softly snoring, drooling, even.
I’ll try and remember the little bits and pieces of decay we zoom past—
those remnants of a life lived before the draughts got bad and the
fields your father’s mother planted are too dry to grow those money
trees. That white, cracking adobo house with a metal fence around it,
whose skeleton slowly crumbles from the sun and rain and impoundment.
It is just down the road from the junkyard that also sells cars and lets you
bring in aluminum for a little extra scratch. And sometimes there is nothing
more than a hutch at the end of a field, not even surrounded by the wire fences
that cut this land apart, who is only held up by some cruel joke or reminder.
If I were buried in the cemetery that is now across the street from the only
gas station in a fifteen mile radius, I couldn’t say I’d be too pleased. But when
everyone is gone, and the orchards grow wild, and my casket wears thin,
maybe I will give something back to this land that seems to be
struggling for something new. Maybe just something better.
Ed Boy 