WEBVTT

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Just have two more.

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I really try to not write
about rural poverty,

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but poetry doesn't like
to be bossed around.

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So when we moved from Blythe up
to northern California in 1997,

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we moved to a town
called Winters, which

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is up in the Sacramento Valley.

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It's an orchard town.

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And if you've ever lived
in an orchard town,

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or know people who
do, you'll know

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that there's a big
orchard burning

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at the end of every year where
all of the dead trees are cut.

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And if the town doesn't really
have anything else going on,

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these are big social
events where you go and you

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watch the dead trees burn.

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It's called an orchard burning.

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So too is this poem.

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"So I was spared.

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Winters is a town that is
plural silence and never cold.

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And the 93A still keels around
the old Murabayashi Orchard,

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where the bark is painted
white to the waist.

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Yes, I have buried
many mean boy cats here

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who'd gotten mouthy
with the interstate.

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One summer at an
orchard burning,

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a half acre of dead peach in
the field, barely a chuff,

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I stood too close.

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My shoes burned quietly.

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I thought I might be
stuck to the Earth

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and was grateful for it.

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The wood festered as warily
as making a decision.

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In the country, we know
how to quiet a dying thing.

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We shoot the moon
over when to plant.

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We are merciful and seldom
abandon, so I was spared.

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I see cities turn away from
the bucolic like sanatoriums.

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City sky can't do what
blazing orchards can,

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make a horizon go out of
its mind, emptied full."