Day 18: I Must Go Out and Find Something Else to Hate

Today, I was thinking about what it would be like to leave a place you'd worked hard to farm.  I drive the same back roads most mornings on my commute to teach at Napa Valley College.  They are winding roads paved over steep green hills.  This morning as I was driving I started thinking about what it must have been like to drive on a road like this in a wagon.  Then, when I passed an orchard filled with trees that hadn't been taken care of for years, I thought about what it would feel like to leave an apple farm you've put your sweat and blood into.  Here is my draft for today:

I Must Go Out and Find Something Else to Hate



Besides the pink-petal blossoms that flag
the untrimmed trees that continually line
the passage of potholed roads carrying
me away from their embrace and this place.

I must find something that is more deadly
than arsenic and lead to kill what spreads
uncontrollably: mistletoe, cankers
mildew, flies, and my need to always look back.

I must watch the green hills roll out toward
somewhere else where the fog rests. I must
site a single tree rising on the hill’s
green, broad back, and know it as a sign

Even as the wagon slows, even as
the dust rises to blind us of hope.