California Transplant

This is not my sky—

blustery, blue, the clouds

scudding by

white, enormous

as elephants strolling

in a line, trunk to tail,

as the snowy Sierra mountains

flying by our open car.

Mine is the flat sky

of rolling hills

gray with moisture

that is not quite rain

but thin, penetrating,

digging down

beneath my jacket

to my skin

yellowish with winter—

the drizzle

of industrial cities,

of northern pines,

of refineries and tank farms.

This is not my skin

coppery even in March,

the sudden heat

of late winter

luring us

to the folded hills

of fault lines,

the blue-eyed grass                                       

nodding its purple head,

the unexpected red

of columbine

hidden among

the quaking thistles.

What landscape is this

that prances in late

spring procession

shaking its tanoaks

fuzzy with pollen

with new leaves,

pregnant with acorns?

I am in it

but not of it,

my soul still buried

in the marshes

and mud flats

of central Jersey,

the oily water

of Elizabeth port,

the Pulaski skyway

arching across a wasteland

of submerged tires,

shopping carts

sucked into the muck,

random slabs of concrete,

Jimmy Hoffa’s body

sunken somewhere.

Twenty years

of rainless summers,

fog that foams

thick as ice cream

down the sides of canyons,

spring winds

that slam the house

like a car

run wild

over the curb—

I may live here

until I die:

Will this place

ever invade my blood

like the sticky

air of Jersey

before a thunder burst?

Mary Petrosky