Midflight/Landlocked

1.

We lay in the hammock, a little shocked to be home.

In the September sky a lingering blue

of the coast,

of small white clouds and screeching sea birds,

the fizzing waves

of an ocean that only moments before

– wasn't it only moments before? –

held us by the ankles,

let us lean far out over that crinkling plane

and away

from the desert that awaited

our crossing.

2.        

Sebastopol, hazy vineyards and a brackish smell of the bay, Novato, Vacaville, ferocious traffic, a death race of freeways, Sacramento, Grass Valley, wispy foothills before the granite waves of the Sierra Nevada, then the fast dive to Reno, train trellises linking the cliffs, Lovelock, broken ridges sliding against a burnt sky, Winnemucca, a cheap motel room for the night. Then with morning, off the interstate and north through the sweeping desert, sagebrush and blond light, the dusty towns of McDermitt, Rome, Jordan Valley on the long shoulders of the horizon; the lone settler cabin on the climb over the Owyhee Mountains, the high broken rhyolite spine and down onto the Snake River Plain, sudden civilization, the river town of Marsing, apple orchards and withered corn fields, tractors pulling veils of dust into the sky, mint smell, the sprawl town of Nampa.

When we get to Boise the skies are milky with smoke from the forest fires in the region. The green of the valley after an endless desert; the trees of the North End cozy as a nest against the bare foothills. We begin unpacking the car while Ada sleeps in the back seat. The house feels vacant, like a face missing its eyes. I'm so disoriented, so doubtful, stunned as a bird batted out of the sky midflight, that after one bag I stand staring out the window at the horizon. I want to drink a bottle of wine and lay with old friends under the live oaks by the sea like we were doing another life ago. When Ada awakens I take her to the hammock and she nestles into my chest. The thought comes to me, Our souls haven't caught up to us yet. . . but they will . . . after a little work, they will.

Ada begins to get restless, to play the “Climb the Prow of the Ship Game”, shimmying high up onto the point of the hammock before tumbling back into my arms. Anna calls out the window for us to help with unpacking. We lay a bit longer, pointing out the wine colors beginning to show in the trees. “Will it still be automn when we get home home?” Ada had asked many times on our trip, excited to see Fall and very concerned the season would come and go before we got back. She was happy now to see the first colors, the fallen sycamore leaves and crab apples in the yard, the wilting garden. “What should we do,” I ask, feeling a bit restless myself, “go inside, or rake up the yard?”

And she shouts out her reply.