flung out beside the road
tracks the satellites
with a Prime Star dish,
the future’s megaphone
declaring victory
over the sagebrush tundra.
Center-pivot sprinklers
carve circles of alfalfa among
rusted pickups, busted tractor attachments,
piles of orange hay string.
From the air they look
like one-handed clocks;
time is a curtain of water
but the future is always drier than the past.
Between the green spheres,
blooms of alkaline dust
where once there
was a wide shallow lake,
the volcanic fist of Fort Rock rising
big over the water like the sails of a galleon,
white light off a thousand little waves.
invisible boats, the bellies of chub
float just out of reach
in the sky
Someone made a pair of sandals
from the stringy wood of the sagebrush,
left them in Cow Cave
left them on the shore
8,000 years ago.
the ghosts of their feet, the pressure of heel and toe
lingering on like a motorcycle’s track across the white playa
Do you remember the advertisements
In out of state newspapers, back-to-the-land magazines?
Five acre lots, Christmas Valley Oregon, cheap as…
dirt
Come here, come quick, start over
in Oregon,
land of the fir tree
the salmon
big rivers
water water everywhere
water water everywhere
You could buy them sight unseen
from one end of a telephone
because, as every real estate agent knows,
there’s no time like the present.
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