Between us, fresh dew fields glisten.
Birds chirp and chase through
windwhistled orchards.
Passing cars rattle my car. I pull off the thirtyfour.

Tucked away in a turnout in the back 
of my truckbed, I canvas the valley.

The outstretched stitching of paintbanded trees
lines the highway home.
In a few months,
they will be floral—offer earth a reprieve from valley heat.

Another car passes too close. 
A wrong turn, an ill-timed sneezed, or panflash sends a car
like a shotput into the ravine running along the otherside
of the freeway—pockmarked with crosses. 

In my notebook, I think about writing a poem to you.
Unsure where to begin,
I draw my truck’s silhouette—
its malformed shadow elongates
beneath the sunrise that will defrost these fields of wild grass. 

I want the poem to be a letter since I can no longer call you
to say that this morning in Los Angeles, 
I have never seen such rain—
it tailed me past Santa Clarita, up the Grapevine 
and through snow sprawled peaks tucking Gorman away. 

To ask you to pray
for the overheated family vans and overpacked pickups 
pulled off in the McDonald’s parking lot
filled with snowmen.

To talk about the Tehachapi Mountains that trapped the storm, 
the trafficless ninetynine,
and westerly ranges outlined 
  in greytouched distance
separated by telephone poles, wanted mechanic signs, 
billboards for rent or stamped with politicians
making California great
again, where there’s never enough rain. 
This letter would tell you that
to the East
in the snowcovered Sierras,
I saw an orangegold light on the ridge.

This letter would tell you I drove safely.
This letter would tell you—don’t worry.