Switchback
We play those hairpin turns in this game of chicken,
weave from side to side, the isolated road
racing away from the vineyards. The next switchback
around a manzanita, its fiery bark giving us pause.
We drift across the double stripes and a bump in the road
rattles the cases of charts in the trunk.
What did this mean, this forbidding evergreen
guarding the dropoffs down to Sonoma Lake?
How could we have known we had the wrong tools,
that instead of beta-blockers and diuretics
we needed scalpels and retractors
an army corps of engineers and a small miracle
to dissect out the Kashia tribe from the Western pannus
of canned foods, wide-screened TVs, diabetes.
Somewhere along those dirt roads, in that one-room school,
there is a hint of song, of dance, a tradition dormant
and unknown to the surrounding viticulture and spirit.
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