DRY CRIK Journal

Somewhere in my head, twenty swords drawn
at once by a ruthless, toothless bunch, one-eying
my reticence – not all my reasonable excuses,

not the rainy holiday traffic stacked and smeared
red across a pickup’s windshield, not the calf
that needs doctoring, but more like the everyday

broke horse in the far corner come saddling –
I’m fine where I am. Visalia has become a city
trying to survive on services spread across

a thousand acres of farm ground planted
to houses, many empty boxes. Just off Lover’s
Lane where my mother must have parked

in high school, the Hmong’s ripe late-tomatoes
staked in tall green rows, lit like Christmas trees,
will fill a lug where the construction stopped

on sandy loam – he’s a second-class throwback
even the city fathers have to admire. I prepare
to walk the plank: need jacket, hat and glasses,

cigarettes and messy cup of coffee as I map
the long way in to see if he got his crop off –
something else, something more than business.