Riding the plains, watching valleys filling
with strange cubist futures,
the old git with the chomp in his mouth
and rarely a kind word for strangers
stares idly in the noontime sun
calloused hands twitching
through wide avenues of detritus
scent of fast food oil
and beans cheese jalepeno,
past tired-eyed massage joints
(he`s been to a few)
up windy laurel roads through
over priced glens, intel head heaven
He sits for a while on the side and
looks over a view still clear on a day
like today, and nods as the
Taurus with the red and blue lights slows
and almost stops, scouring the hills
for bums on their way to some
fabled hemp seed heaven
thirty years late and a little too worn.
He remembers that time he was up
here, back when his father had the ranch
and this kid comes walking through
the woods, plucking a resin toned banjo
That was back on... well before things
fell apart... Jerry, the kids name
all space eyed and sunshine
before he`d learned what that look meant
Well, they`d talked a bit, he had
more than a passing fancy for the banjo
though the fiddle was more his style
and then he`d gone back and done some chores,
taking his sweet time, the neighbors were
having a barbeque, Don and Barb and
their lovely daughter Emeline.
Another car, swerving to a stop ahead,
backing up, foreign make, volvo
surfed-up natural blondes
not bad-- Do you know how to
get to 9 from here? Yeah, just
go straight ahead 5 miles in a
sort of windy way and turn right
or left, your choice. Thank you
voices chiming brightly and fading
in the early summer wind.
stretching and cracking his knuckles
and heading up, up through forest
that hadn`t changed much at all
except there was more of it now
the cows were gone, houses now
sprouting hidden in the woods
like mushrooms, holding strange secrets
as mountain houses generally do.
Finally up to the ranch, where he
remembered swinging on the wood fence
Hardy Boys style, white shirt, blue jeans sucking
down pop after pop, pushing eachother
off and waiting those long waits
for girls to pass by, all of them
familiar and easy on the eye.
Girls back then, they were easy on the eye.
The gates, rusted, the horses long gone
and the smell of mildew hangs on
the cracked old troughs. Still he
gives them a good kick and it`s
back in the saddle on the ol` Rio Diddle
of the faint Calihexico way.
Back in the saddle to stay.
