Bodega | Proof of Living

I drive down I-5 past almond trees
flat charcoal vector field
scoring the direction and magnitude

of last summer's fires
In my right mirror
flickers a crane

in a brown ditch bowed
marble Madonna
wings parting white folded robes

Starlings swarm the overpass
their mud nests
thick oil paint slip

past as if I’m not the one moving
At the Grapevine I park
in the shade of a Shell station

sleek grackles lurk
below an old poplar
little birds like sepia memories

arranged on a picket fence
Surfing San Onofre at sunset
I mistake a string of gulls

for a helicopter
through soft breakers
I follow the perfect

silver circle above the horizon
I think, I have caught the moon
at its fullest watch it

for a few seconds or minutes
when clouds weaken
it bites my eyes

the sun all this time
That night on the bluffs
three aircraft land

in the grass their wings
stern black brows
Back home

I pretend highway 24’s roar
is the hush of a stream
the yard is squirrel

scrabble on redwood
slow yawn of a Boeing
ambulance wail

bird mnemonics—
hoodle hoodle drink-your-tea cherry
cherry cherry peter peter jeremy

I don’t know what
each song means don’t
know what the ambulance meant

I am relearning nouns
from early childhood:
truck, sun, bird, plane

I read the crane was an egret
the starlings were swallows
I look up

the aircraft
its name,
Osprey

Proof of Living