Gillian Wegener has lived in the Central Valley for nine years, when she moved here from Humboldt County to teach jr. high language arts. She has been writing poetry since her own junior high stint, and has been published in several Central Valley Publications including Penumbra, Zambomba and In the Grove.
Tomorrow will be spring.
Already the snows are melting
and the river has turned wide and heavy
and green with silt.
-
There are no cardinals in California.
I've missed them,
jumping red
in the leafless tree.
-
The apricot trees bloom,
thrilled with their own potential,
a thousand shades of pale,
a paradise of bees.
-
How simple, how
simple it would be, to slip
unnoticed into the green water
like a stone.
-
Hawk hunched
hungry on a fence,
the tender-eared mice
know all your tricks.
-
In August,
Sour Grass Creek will run dry, but
now water runs through it,
praying.
-
In Moore's pasture,
the egrets stand
like exclamation points,
though nothing
surprises the cows.
-
If I am resurrected as a bird,
make me a plain brown sparrow.
I do not want great beauty,
only that quick flight.
-
The storm rolls down from the north,
lid being closed. No shadows then.
Rain pounds slick and hard. Later,
the storm rolls away to the south,
a lid being opened.
. . . and then something
breaks away from the hawk.
A piece of himself, dark as shadow,
drops,
tumbles
over, pitches down
and down, tries
to right itself and
fly and
flutters
and becomes, not a shadow, but
a red-winged blackbird, wounded,
falling,
opening it's wings
to any kind of salvation.
The cow steps
into the irrigation ditch gingerly,
as if holding up a pretty skirt.
Once there, nothing can move her.
She blinks away flies,
lets the water lap at her belly,
and waits for summer
to give way to fall.
And for this reason I stand on top of Mt. Diablo,
A plane slips past, dragging its sound behind it
a feather of a blue jay on the path, blue
The Golden Gate is hidden by fog and the ocean
and the whole delta exposes itself,
and Sacramento is just a smog-brown smudge
the distance between here and there is curved
stops to watch where I go next, as if I might follow
And I meet only one other person on the path,
what day it is. I keep walking until my socks and shoes
35 California counties spread out around me like
a live action topographic map, the dirt as red
as blood and for once, whose blood doesn't matter.
like something remembered, and below, three vultures,
all with those naked, unwise heads, circle
over some death, but there is no tragedy here, only
edged with stiff black. I walk by and do not pick it up,
as if the bird will certainly be searching
for this lost piece of wing.
still shifts under it, oblivious to everything but
its own motion, and the ocean meets the bay and that bay
meets the river and that river meets another
open and lovely and nearly crass,
all that water when the rest of the view
is the same burnt blonde as his hairs
on the horizon. I cannot see Mt. Shasta
from here. If the earth were flat, it would loom
in the north like a distant guardian, but
like the curve of a belly and I will have to settle
for closer views. This lizard for example, who
scrambles the path on small hot feet, who
him, uninvited as I am. This manzanita for example,
whose smooth red skin I would gladly claim as my own.
Heat shivers its leaves silver in the sun.
a man slicing an apple away from its core. We smile,
but we do not speak. He sits and eats in scant shade,
I keep walking and nearly forget my name and
are as red as the earth, until the moon peeks over
the eastern skyline, until the lizards no longer notice me,
until I can almost, almost go home.
From one angle the water reflects the emerald green of the hills,
The sky takes over from another angle though and the water
The waiting rain recognizes itself in the reservoir water, sees itself
Poppies freckle the hillside, orange as small jokes, and there is
such a luxury of color can exist unpainted. I am greedy for more, but
No use thinking of the green that would continue down these hills
somewhere below a surface grown as smooth as skin with forgetfulness.
is pushing behind it, and I am less uneasy on high ground, deep in the green,
gulls far in the distance, tiny as flecks of ash, watching the clouds and
but the water prefers a subtler jewel and turns that brilliant green to a jade
as creamy and ancient as anything worn by an emperor's daughter.
turns gray and blue and nearly black by turns as the clouds pass,
fat with rain, nearly ready to spill themselves onto valley farms.
multiplied, massed and powerful, knows, as sure as rain knows
anything, that it too will end up here sooner or later. Or later than that.
an entire slope of wild mustard, the yellow of it so intense against
the green that I catch my breath and look again and still don't believe
there is no use mourning for the land lost under the water,
the only evidence of it a thin rim of red dirt like an eye's red rim.
into the forgotten shape of the ravine, the poppies that will not grow there,
the trees that are only ghosts of trees now, floating softened and pale
It is early spring and the water is high. The earthen wall of the dam
is well-engineered and will not give way. But the whole of the reservoir
watching this hawk, close now, raise his wings and settle again, watching
the flock of ducks on the water, watching specks of white that must be
the sun and the faint crescent of an early moon move across the sky, watching
the water ripple and smooth and ripple, the wind like a hand across its surface.
Look closely --
Pull back --
the Valley is punctuated with dusty towns,
houses with their backs toward the freeway,
soulless strip malls, glaring car lots, horses, cattle, goats
enclosed in square pens, broad expanses of orchards,
of vineyards, of fields. Corn grows tall. Peaches turn red.
On clear days, mountains loom on both horizons.
The world becomes a waiting bowl.
On hazy days, days of planting, of harvest, of heat,
when the dust spins in furious columns,
the world is an overturned teacup --
the only horizon straight-up blue.
Late afternoon, oleanders and eucalyptus turn silver.
Tinseled orchards flick thick sunlight back on itself.
Crows perch on miles and miles of telephone wire, quiet,
medieval statuary welcoming in the dusk.
from a distance, the crows and the trees are invisible,
the weave of freeways and canals are lost
in the wild, scarred topography.
The gray sprawls of San Diego, Los Angeles,
Bakersfield, Fresno all vanish,
leaving space brown and blue and green.
The world falls back.
Time reverses itself.
Waves test a new shore, memorizing shape.
Mountains revel in their height,
and the Valley, cushioned between
the nameless ranges, looks like nothing more
than the inland sea it once was,
fossil-shaped and waiting for discovery.
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 1999. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for
copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their
original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author.
Copyright © Gillian Wegener 1999.
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