The pilot cuts power to the engines

 

The pilot cuts power to the engines

as we’re crossing the snowy Sierra
and the plane drifts lower
across the fertile valley of rivers
to the airport by the bay.

My Uber driver has a straggly beard,
calico flesh with spots of white like half-moons,
eyes with a touch of the wild
like you see in Malamutes
with their wolf-ancestor DNA
who should be watched around small children.

He asks “Where from?”
I say “Just back from DC.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.”
The driver mutters a curse, then smiles.
“Come,” he says.
“Where?” I ask.

He drives me south through suburbs like a Lego set
then west among mountains like misty breasts
into a forest dense as bear fur
to a redwood tree with a burn scar so large
he can drive inside it and park.
“Get out” he says.

Beneath my feet are beer cans, cigarette butts.
Scent of charred wood mixes with urine.
It smells like the city I just left.
“Come,” he says.

We climb spiral stairs within the trunk
and walk out onto a massive limb
high above the other treetops,
wisps of fog blowing from the blue Pacific
in breeze that ruffles our hair
with the fragrance of salt-spray, of photosynthesis,
of prowling pumas and fresh unfolding fern.
A pair of red-tailed hawks soar spirals in an updraft.

“Here” he says.
“Yes” I say.
“You will pay me now.”
And gladly, I do.

…..

From my book Random Saints.
First published in Rat’s Ass Review. Thank you editor Roderick Bates.
Photo by me, taken in La Honda. That’s fog, not smoke.

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