First, god and the soil
play Go with circle farms
on a board of New Mexico.
West, the hills
turn from chalk to pencil lines
all drowning in peach and gray-pink.
From thirty-two thousand feet
we follow the sun to Los Angeles.
but the haze disappears and the day ends.
Evening hits like a dark marriage
of halogen and mercury vapor,
full of non-repeating beauty and quiet light.
Second, my sister finds me in Burbank,
gives me water, and takes me home.
To be a foreigner and to be found!
Our Orange Line city bus offers me
a five-dollar haven of rattled peace and pulls
the weary through palms and pawnbrokers.
Family of the summer with
new life coming in September,
I had forgotten we stretched this far.