PESCADERO CREEK
A place for the light to divide the air
between the native, black branches.
A place for the water to ease
over the waiting rock and silt, sweeping out swirls
of glass and paper.
This is a road that follows the depressions
and lilt of the fault line country.
Coming round curves, I think the cypress
are moving, too. I don't remember them here.
Half-strangled in brushwood, a 1960s pickup leans
out of the creek water, rear tires buried
below the surface, windows blown out,
frozen in the act of escape like
a dinosaur in the soft alluvium,
the front seat matted in a yellow-green mold
and bent cigarettes: this was a meeting place once,
where you could rest at an angle and smoke,
you would talk a while as you eyed
what part of the sky was not itself obscured.
If you were lucky, you would not notice
the machine sink any lower.
This is a place that doesn't ask you to leave.
