Standing Sentinels on Barbed-Wire Fences
What are the stories behind the white crosses
Standing sentinels on barbed wire fences
In the fallow space between field and road.
White crosses.
The Seventh Seals of California.
The dead talk in silence with the holy angels gone.
The living chant Sita Ram and Hare Krishna.
Tony Bennett asks them to choose
Love or Gin. Life or sin.
The Shafter/Wasco exit on Interstate 5
Looms in the distance in front of me.
I can plow through an imaginary traffic jam
And be the anti-hero ghost of Jack Nicholson
From Five Easy Pieces.
I find hexagonal wax satisfaction
In seeing hives in the almond tree orchards.
The bees tease,
They tease,
They tease us saying
“The world’s all right”
Sammy Cahn and Frank Sinatra are friends here.
“You can’t have one without the other.”
I travel north on the DNA strand
Make a 5 three dimensional
Give it a twist and there you have it
Traveling north in the direction of the farm,
I go into the past.
Traveling south towards Hollywood,
I go into the future.
Zen meditating in between.
Rolling green hillsides show that the rains have been good.
A man is off his ATV starting water in an alfalfa field.
Two dogs stand by his side
Loose in limb, untethered by leather,
Unashamed in their pissing and shitting wherever they want.
Golden poppies grow in the median.
Like I say, the rains have been good
Dormant seeds blossom.
I want to inhabit their color.
Pulling off the road,
I intend to piss in an almond orchard
Halfway between past and future.
To be a dog I’ve always wanted to be.
I’ve paid my dues
With the skin of knuckles rubbed raw and bloody
Helping Joe make irrigation ditches in the field at Coey’s
The almond trees are bereft of lovers and leaves.
The ground barren of color and weed.
Maybe all the holy angels went to the blue sky.
I park and step outside.
The car is positioned to block the freeway sightline.
I think, “I know this lie.”
The air is 40 degree California crisp
The dirt cheats the sun.
Dry on top, the field holds rainwater well underneath.
The almond trees seem dry to the eye.
Their sweet scent betraying the silence of the dead
Held in the moisture is Central Valley dirt.
I am of it sweet.
Sweeter than anyone will know from the freeway.
Sweeter than the loneliness I feel on this ride.
It’s common sweet.
Tout sweet.
Dirt sweet.
Work sweet.
Farm sweet.
Breathe-in sweet.
Shiva sweet.
Gin and sin sweet
Sammy Cahn sweet.
White cross sweet.
Golden poppy sweet.
Piss sweet.
