May 8 2002

Stenner

Seabreeze in the blond oats, curves of the railway as graceful as the swoops of a swallow.  Wind and water and birdsong.  A west-facing hillside.  Thick green light and dark set off by straw-colored grass.

Andrew asks, “Are there peacocks up here? I just saw one.” I remember encountering a peacock by the old homestead behind the eucalyptus grove.

Crossing the creek by the big cypresses I found a newt.

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Two grand circling red tails as came above the tracks.

That super deep green, as we passed through it on the trail winding the curves of the round hills in the lowering sun

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turned out to be great patches of lupine–dark green of the leaves and purple of the flowers.

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Sitting at the base of oak rock, a tree growing out of a crack in a sculpted outcrop of conglomerate waiting to see a quadruple conjunction of planets in the west.

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But the fog comes in as the light recedes and just a few shreds of blue transparence remain behind the gathering grey curtain.  From one rock to another a straight arrow trail in the grass uniformly three inches wide as if made by a mechanical herbicide dispenser, connecting one underground city of gophers to another.

This shelf above Stenner canyon thick with springs and marshes releasing water from the chapparal steeps above. Huge sycamores and oaks directly below.

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This morning making coffee in the dark without my glasses, a sharp prong of light appears above Cuesta Ridge.  Not the sun or the moon.  A new being in the heavens? I get the binoculars and look again, recognizing a curve on the dagger-like spike. The nail-pairing of a crescent moon almost vertical clawing the sky.

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