Really just a new poem. I've been in Oregon since November 12 and will be here until November 22. I'm here hunting for a place to live as living in Southern California is an impossibility for me now; far too expensive. I'm not sure this is where I'll be going. I'm sort of on a fact-finding mission. But, on the drive up here, especially through central California's farmlands, the breadth of the drought the state is suffering was palpable. And disheartening. This is the poem that is the result of driving north on I-5.

Driving North on I-5

(Oregon)

A modern dustbowl –

signs asking:

“Does growing food mean

wasting water?”

as we fly past a

cutoff for Yosemite;

grapevines going rusty

in the autumn sun as

we pass Dos Amigos View Point.

The land is bone-dry,

dry as papyrus,

brittle as a forgotten soul.

By the time we pass

Crow's Landing

the sun is setting,

glancing off the paper-thin

limbs of desiccated trees.

As we miss our last chance

to turn toward Yosemite,

even I begin to flake

into peeled-back bark;

behind us,

all we see is dust.