Headed for Home With a Hopeless Prognosis
Poem by Patricia Wallace Jones •
Photo by Steve Rice
 Leaving the city its grim predictions, I wheel you toward spring on Highway 20 – that brief season when wet with winter the north coast greens, outrolls tall purple spires of Pride of Madeira, wild iris and poppy to warm its bare shoulders. Past the azalea stand I slow at the curve where winter’s first litters learn to herd early, all of them pale balls of fluff, puppies and lambs that caper like sisters. I need headlights to climb up and over the coastal ridge, its switchbacks broken only in flashes of sun on broom. But coming down to sea through pygmy pine, beyond the bridge where 20 ends, I can see home: the heron wading, a sliver rising. |