on the Amtrak 714 to Bakersfield...
{an e-postcard}

a prairie falcon skims a foot above the valley floor,
perhaps in search of the first tentative reptiles to emerge
from dreaming, suspended equilibrium, into this sunlight.
the san joaquin grass is high and verdant from the lushest rains
seen in a decade and a half of california weather.
the train crosses a bridge above a swollen stream,
where two mallards dive in pursuit of grubby prey.

spring swims through april's open portals and i again find myself on the road, book in hand, blank journal pages waiting to be filled, and for once i find myself wishing i was in a car instead, so i can stop anywhere i wanted, instead of ruing these rails, this flowing train, as i glimpse patches of earth and water outside that might yield itself to capture, if only i had the luxury of stopping and getting off, any place i survey.

surging water threatens a crumbling levee where of late, just last fall, the streambed lay bereft of moisture, its earth cracking in the sere silence, dry as the hum of a nearby grain elevator. it seems like aeons ago now when i confided to a friend how he had saved me that summer, when what was once a home became a fortress, hedged around with baleful suspicion, woven into its heraldry the icons speaking of my ignoble, utter banishment.

and yet i go back to the source, passing over from this island to that, conscious that i may be losing things in the interstices between these central valley towns, perhaps a life here that might be touched, perhaps a soul there that might be saved... but i am not jesus, i am not that crucified jew who sacrificed one in order that all might be saved. i am only this: someone's friend, a young person's mentor, and for now this is all that matters, as i go on, even while i know that stopping may have meant something in some other dimension, some other flawed passageway from here, as they say, to eternity.

someone waits for me at this journey's end
in his blue car of patience, or so i hope it to be:
for even now, the train sits an hour detained,
fallow and unmoving at a sidespur
north of Fresno in a kind of sidereal shadow,
waiting for the freight train that has preempted
us on the main rails, its endless length to pass,
its precious cargo of minerals and coal
on a slow but urgent journey northward,
returning from earth again to energy.

L.N.