Haze
1: December, San Jaoquin
All things harbored by the interstate's
narrow perspective—distance
a mere collar of low, wintering trees; seasonal
fauna, stilled egrets. Here, all that thrives
thrives and collects in the enveloping haze.
2: December, San Benito
Broad, tilled fields exhibit majestic brown, &
that neat magic of furrows—plus two, captive,
winter oaks. Through the filtering haze
the hills rise in sweet, dreamy tiers
as in reproductions of 18th century prints.
3: Winter Fields
Shadow-furrowed black fields spill
across the ditchless blacktop; crows. Old barns,
old sheds, lofty windbreaks—somber, back-bent
bracero life. The listless mountains rise
in misty plates, like in old, Japanese landscapes.
4: Winter Berries
Unsuccinct, alien, wrapped in black plastic,
the plowed hillsides shine in cruel excess.
Pylons tiptoe through, quietly, above
the nascent, afternoon traffic. Across
the agricultural plain the ancient mountains
rise in hazy panels.
5: Hatton Canyon Reverie
At dusk the willows turn goldleaf—bronchial, a
gray lattice-work beside husky, green pines; pampas
hillside flagwork, pampas epaulets and plumes; lessening
winds and sirens. Beyond this the Santa Lucias
bronze in the gull-breached, asservate light.
6: Monterey
Monday night at the mall, final Monday
of the millennium—untenably bargainesque and
munificent: I watch Mexican girls move in pairs—
thick-hipped and giggling—adverse to gang boys
circling the parking lot, eyeing, bumping, wielding
red-hued laser lights.
7: Hatton Canyon Reverie II
Morning—goldleaf flaring from the canyon mouth;
the Santa Lucias backlit, blackened and layered.
Brisk ocean breeze; small birdsongs; exhilaration.
An old collective of broad oaks on the knoll
beyond the commercial center—their preceeding
shadows.
8: Ocean Gray
A boy and a girl knee-deep in the sea
screaming at waves that collapse in roughness,
into saltspray and foam—beyond that
the sea is calm, listless, and flattened.
Slowly the sun settling upon it.
9: Ocean Blue
Now lifted and perching on sand dunes,
beyond the ice plant and salt spray,
admiring the handsome and spreading bay—
below the kites, hang-gliders and gulls—
noting the noteworthy largesse, the ocean
blue.
10: December, Pissaro
Late December, late Pissaro—car-crowded
and car-direct: sun-browned fields lying
fallow and carressed. Clusters of cropped
red almonds; tangle of leafless, gray walnuts.
A long, quiet line of languid, ascetic poplars.
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