OBSIDIAN

Begin to write Shortstacks
And Life will give you words.
So it was:
On a road trip to Northern California

Where the phenomena experienced
Are here manifested
In simple strings of words which may
Resonate when read or spoken.

Double Smash Burgers (lettuce wrapped)
At Third Window Brewing Company.
A King Tide early the next morning
Flooding Santa Barbara’s City Beaches.

A detour to Mission San Miguel Arcángel 
Built at the very end of the 18th century
By the indigenous Salinen people;
Soon to become their Death Camp.

Today, the surviving buildings exude
A profound pathos:
The thick, white-washed adobe, oak vigas
And mission tile still strangely compelling.

Entering San Francisco at Twilight:
A full moon hovering over
A Milk-white, Lunar-washed urbanscape
In the rattling energy of rush hour.

In the morning, a viewing of
An SFMOMA Installation by Kara E-Walker
Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)
A Respite for the Weary Time-Traveler.

Like this work, The Road Trip is also
A mechanism for sympathetic magic
And for probing 
The liminal spaces

Between human and machine
Future and past
Living and dead
Cynicism and wonder.

At Hopland we began the crossing
Of the Mayacamas Mountains
On a two-lane Blacktop
Threaded between crag and precipice:

To arrive at Lakeport
A once-upon-a-time Resort Town
Harboring an Ojai-sized community
On the western shore of Clearlake.

From the East facing windows
Of a beautiful mid-century house
Mount Konocti appeared across the Lake
Rising from its volcanic bed of Obsidian.

It was from material found at this site
That Walker set her figures in a Garden
Of Obsidian – a black glass said
To heal emotional trauma from the Past…