Route 8, San Clemente to Buckeye

Monday morning surfers at San Onofre—
Camp Pendleton’s plowed fields and jagged trails—
Heavenly ports where they make new weapons—
Harleys exit to sleepy El Cajon—
Casinos on desolate mountain bends—
A steep decline at the San Diego
County line, a metropolis of rock
With more beauty than the city of LA
As the road veers from pine to sand-sprayed sage
To El Centro below the sea, salt bleached.

Mexicans in tennis shoes at threshers
Pack cabbages and broccoli in crates
Near Macy’s towards the whispery border
Where sheared, bleating lambs feed and shit new grass
In endless valve-fed rows like cherry cabinets—
The trees hold the first orange balls of spring—
Wildflowers purple as cough suppressant
And yellow like Scandinavian hair—
A creosote field as large as Phoenix—
Imperial Dunes like Saharan hills.

A snake in the river left behind Yuma—
Arizona where the first saguaros
Rise like tuning forks from brush and black rock—
Dateland oasis “famous” for its shakes—
A diner from the space age at Gila Bend—
Metallic dinosaurs and scorpions—
A canal of cows below the highway
And the smell of slaughter from miles away—
At the hour the sky turns to mauve and slate
A solitary service station glows.

A private prison by the landfill road
Lit up like a factory all yellow,
Modular cities behind round barbed wire
Amid the unbrushed stone and brittlebush,
Ironwood and dirt, all free in the wind
As branches dance to music I can’t hear
But still I feel it sweep across my face
As my true essence, trapped and then released
Like the quail flowing over the bursage,
Like the dust that rides highways 'til they cease.