March

     There’s a moment—barely—when you see both
ocean and bay from the 280 as it mills north
     near Millbrae, the waters flash what they know
of daylight, and you register being a sort of gliding porch
          before dunking back under cypress
               and their bob and sway, and the press
          of eucalyptus and acacia in full dress.

     It was like that—like a shot—when the freeway
let the crying out. In a flash was what was trying
     to let a crying out, and if I hesitate to say
weep it’s in mind of a celebrated novelist’s sighing
          as he tells me he can’t countenance
               a grown man of my (his) race
          writing weep with a straight face.

     My face wettens. A bit of soul, maybe, exiting
the body. A disheveled, monkish tassel
     on a snowy egret on the evergreen exit sign
settles nothing. As I, hands on the wheel, unravel
          like that overflown yellow—
               bursting along a rural
          artery, atlas-line, mellow

          concrete sentence of a path—
               the acacia’s lemon bath
          over the roadwall like over a dam.