California
Sun was an enemy in the last garden.
It blotched the mountains yellow, scorched thru the Redwoods,
The Madrone. Mesquite grew stiff, shiny-leaved
Against it. Liveoak leaves went tough and black.
Everything foreign, being tender, died.
So irrigation plotted itself in my tendons. . .
Dogdays we'd slouch a mile through stickburrs and lizards
Down the 101; then sitting on gunnysacks
We'd scud across the hot knocking rock-slide
Into the creekbed. Wallowing along it, half
For the cool, half to avoid Poison Oak,
Rattlers. The mocha dog nudging and biting
The minnow-augured water. Brambles fruited
In the one place shaded all day by the cliff-hanging.
I thought with my spine, while up on our waists in water
We hunched there like brown bears to eat the berries . . .
Five years rose up and went down. More and more
I lived by silences, by hibernations.
I woke at dawn. At dawn with a shotgun I woke
To watch in morning fog from my porch a tawny
Mountain lion come down in morning fog
To kill my chickens. I chose against those chickens.
_____________
Laura Ulewicz
Why It Is I Chose To Be Alien
selected poems
Delete, 2022
