The Elements of San Joaquin

for César Chávez Field The wind sprays pale dirt into my mouth The small, almost invisible scars On my hands. The pores in my throat and elbows Have taken in a seed of dirt of their own. After a day in the grape fields near Rolinda A fine silt, washed by sweat, Has settled into the lines On my wrists and palms. Already I am becoming the valley, A soil that sprouts nothing. For any of us. Wind A dry wind over the valley Peeled mountains, grain by grain, To small slopes, loose dirt Where red ants tunnel. The wind strokes The skulls and spines of cattle To white dust, to nothing, Covers the spiked tracks of beetles, Of tumbleweed, of sparrows That pecked the ground for insects. Evenings, when I am in the yard weeding, The wind picks up the breath of my armpits Like dust, swirls it Miles away And drops it On the ear of a rabid dog, And I take on another life. Wind When you got up this morning the sun Blazed an hour in the sky, A lizard hid Under the curled leaves of manzanita And winked its dark lids. Later, the sky grayed, And the cold wind you breathed Was moving under your skin and already far From the small hives of your lungs. Stars At dusk the first stars appear. Not one eager finger points toward them. A little later the stars spread with the night And an orange moon rises To lead them, like a shepherd, toward dawn. Sun In June the sun is a bonnet of light Coming up, Little by little, From behind a skyline of pine. The pastures sway with fiddle-neck, Tassels of foxtail. At Piedra A couple fish on the river’s edge, Their shadows deep against the water. Above, in the stubbled slopes, Cows climb down As the heat rises In a mist of blond locusts, Returning to the valley. Rain When autumn rains flatten sycamore leaves, The tiny volcanos of dirt Ants raised around their holes, I should be out of work. My silverware and stack of plates will go unused Like the old, my two good slacks Will smother under a growth of lint And smell of the old dust That rises When the closet door opens or closes. The skin of my belly will tighten like a belt And there will be no reason for pockets. Harvest East of the sun’s slant, in the vineyard that never failed, A wind crossed my face, moving the dust And a portion of my voice a step closer to a new year. The sky went black in the ninth hour of rolling trays, And in the distance ropes of rain dropped to pull me From the thick harvest that was not mine. Fog If you go to your window You will notice a fog drifting in. The sun is no stronger than a flashlight. Not all the sweaters Hung in closets all summer Could soak up this mist. The fog: A mouth nibbling everything to its origin, Pomegranate trees, stolen bicycles, The string of lights at a used-car lot, A Pontiac with scorched valves. In Fresno the fog is passing The young thief prying a window screen, Graying my hair that falls And goes unfound, my fingerprints Slowly growing a fur of dust— One hundred years from now There should be no reason to believe I lived. Daybreak In this moment when the light starts up In the east and rubs The horizon until it catches fire, We enter the fields to hoe, Row after row, among the small flags of onion, Waving off the dragonflies That ladder the air. And tears the onions raise Do not begin in your eyes but in ours, In the salt blown From one blister into another; They begin in knowing You will never waken to bear The hour timed to a heart beat, The wind pressing us closer to the ground. When the season ends, And the onions are unplugged from their sleep, We won’t forget what you failed to see, And nothing will heal Under the rain’s broken fingers.