A green swath on a map beckons me to leave cocoon of car-choked highway and navigate lonely paths of pavement through lost faded towns, past corrals of nodding donkeys sipping crude, across wedded crusts of earth that seek divorce To a wide stretch of planet where dirt grids of would-be streets hint at failed Xanadu dreams, phalanxes of solar shields form shimmering mirage, asphalt knife slices open green carpet and salt abandoned by water gone off to the clouds Midst a billion nascent blooms of fiddleneck, owls clover and meadows foam I stand in this empty place (named, they say, for grass that caressed the belly of Spanish horse) and ask Why did you call? Then for a moment a brief moment, I am one of its wild plants freed of seed by winter rains to reach towards the sun and offer petals red, yellow, blue my sole task to stand sentinel o'er the land and be beautiful before the hot, brown old age of summer and brittleness of death in fall
A National Monument, California’s CARRIZO PLAIN is a large, enclosed grasslands plain formed in part by the San Andreas Fault. Located between Bakersfield and San Luis Obispo, it is the largest remaining native grassland in the state and is renown for its spring wildflowers.
This poem was written in 2015 after a first brief visit to the plain, Robbie and I taking Highway 58 through it while driving back to Los Angeles from Santa Rosa. The photo was taken in April, 2019 on a camping trip with friends John Raycraft and Rick Guiterrez.