long walks home from work
tired over bridges, crossing streets to make connections
but forgoing the crowded bus
for today’s air
along a street that is a ridge overlooking the bay
closer to the pines
or now up hills past defunct storefronts
from this city through the ocean to a place where I only sleep
hardly
waking up late, rushing to wait, running to sit
wondering outward at so many different, complicated patterns of land
it seems like all my thoughts happened then except one
which is looking out a car window
emerald embedded in a foothill’s fold
none of my friends would believe the beauty on the fast highway
licking a tempo stripe after stripe after stripe
the wet metal taste of rivers
potato salad fed to me by a strange mother
a recipe I’ll always be trying to recreate
I only cry because I can’t paint.
I sit up desperate at night.
How green it was.
The iron smell.
Trumpeting
mountains.
How cold
and gray
the sky
and
sea.
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