FOUR CREEKS
The great leveler
in a frying pan
upon a camp stove
or off the mountains
into an inland sea
to float food and freight
from Stockton to Visalia �
word traveled faster
than the water subsided
in the summer of �68,
how chickens starved
in the branches of trees.
After 41 consecutive days
of rain, the DG
on Dennison Ridge
gave under the weight
of snow and dammed
the South Fork
into a three day lake,
taking part of the Garfield
Grove�s Giant Sequoias
to the Wilderness of Woodville,
scattering redwood and yellow pine
for forty-two miles
where adobe houses melted
and tens of thousands cattle
drowned on Christmas Eve.
Like any other perfect
suburbia with cul-de-sacs
between shopping malls,
concrete walls correlling tracts
of two-storey houses,
business is booming
upon the alluvium
where chickens starved
in the branches of trees.