If there are moments
that tell the brain
its clever deceptions serve a purpose,
the many raptures of the ancient
common sky speak constantly
with a small man’s generosity,
turning feverish,
scattering clouds of hands’ shadow’s thickness
into the shapes of animals and winds
for a gesture, an emphasis.

Traveling down the wide unbroken
San Luis Road the green highway from the coast
to the smoky central valley,
cliffs that speak too,
rasped voice for the spent
primordial torrent that dug California,
the other day told me
the gift of clouds to mimic quarries,
high embedded wastes of granite
staring down the practical jokes of dynamite
and diesel,
water vapor mocking the eons.

I was thinking, you might say,
of the woman I love.