Countryside

Apart from branches in courtyards and small stones

The countryside is beyond me.

I can go along University Avenue from Rochester to Sobrante

And then the Avenue continues to the Bay.

Often I think of the dry scope of foothill country,

Moraga Hill, Andreas, Indian country, where I was born

And where in the scrub the air tells me

How to be born again.

Often I think of the long rollers

Breaking against the beaches

All the way down the coast to the border

On bookish cressets and culverts blue and Mediterranean.

There I break

In drops of spray as fine as letters

Blown high,

But waking am the shore they break upon.

Both the dry talkers, those old Indians,

And the dry trollers, those old pirates

From around the Horn, say something,

But mostly in the courts it's louder talking

Gavel rapping, and procedural dismays.

Still where we are, and where we call and call,

The long rollers of the sea come in

As if they lived here. The dry Santa Ana

Sweeps up the town and takes it for a feast.

Then Rochester to El Sobrante is a distance

No longer than my name.