Cruising 99

for Lawson Fusao Inada and Alan Chong Lau

A Porphyry of Elements

Starting in a long swale between the Sierras

and the Coast Range,

Starting from ancient tidepools of a Pleistocene sea,

Starting from exposed granite bedrock,

From sandstone and shale, glaciated, river-worn,

and scuffed by wind,

Tired of the extremes of temperature,

the weather’s wantonness,

Starting from the survey of a condor’s eye

Cutting circles in the sky over Tehachapi and Tejon,

Starting from lava flow and snow on Shasta,

a head of white hair,

a garland of tongue-shaped obsidian,

Starting from the death of the last grizzly,

The final conversion of Tulare County

to the internal-combustion engine,

Staring from California oak and acorn,

scrubgrass, rivermist,

and lupine in the foothills,

From days driving through the outfield clover

of Modesto in a borrowed Buick,

From nights drinking pitchers of dark

in the Neon Moon Bar & Grill,

From mornings grabbing a lunchpail, work gloves,

and a pisspot hat,

From Digger pine and Douglas fir and aspen around Placerville,

From snowmelt streams slithering into the San Joaquin,

From the deltas and levees and floods of the Sacramento,

From fall runs of shad, steelhead, and salmon,

From a gathering of sand, rock, gypsum, clay,

limestone, water, and tar,

From a need or desire to throw your money away

in The Big City,

From a melting of history and space in the crucible

of an oil-stained hand—

Starting from all these, this porphyry of elements,

this aggregate of experiences

Fused like feldspar and quartz to the azure stone

of memory and vision,

Starting from all of these and an affectionate eye

for straight, unending lines,

We hit this old road of Highway Ninety-Nine!

II.

A Samba for Inada

Let’s go camping

Let’s go chanting

Let’s go cruising

Let’s go boozing

Let’s go smoke

Let’s go folk

Let’s go rock

Let’s go bop

Let’s go jazz

Let’s go fast

Let’s go slow

Let’s go blow

Let’s go Latin

Let’s go cattin

Let’s go jiving

Let’s go hiding

Let’s go disco

Let’s go Frisco

Let’s go blues

Let’s go cruise

Let’s go far

Let’s go near

Let’s go camping

Let’s go chanting

Let’s go lazy

Let’s go boozing

Let’s go crazy

Let’s go cruising

III.

Cruising in the Greater Vehicle/A Jam Session

“Well, goddamnit, Lawson! Whyn’t you play in key and keep to the

rhythm? First you say you wanna go back to Fresno, back to the fish store

and Kamaboko Gardens on the West Side, and then you say, forget it, I

take it back, let’s go to the Sacto Bon-Odori instead.”

“Yeah. And this ain’t even shoyu season yet, chump!”

“Awww, hell. What’s wrong with you two? Can’t you improvise? You

know, I’m just laying down a bass, man. Just a rhythm, a scale,

something to jam on, something to change, find our range, something to

get us going. Once we get started, we can work our way around to Weed,

put on some tire chains, or break down in Selma, refuse to buy grapes,

raisins, or Gallo, do a pit-stop at a Sacto sporting goods, pick up some air

mattresses shaped like pearl-diving women, and float all day downriver to

the deltas, sipping Cokes and saké in the summer heat.”

“Shit. Whyn’t you just solo and forget the rest of us? You start chanting

and pretty soon we’re hearing the entire Lotus Sutra.”

“You two Buddhaheads just a pair of one-eyed Japs with dishpan hands

and deadpan minds, man. This is the Champ Chonk talking, and we’re

playing Chinese anaconda. Eight-card, no-peek pak-kai, roll your own,

hi-lo, three for sweep, four for hot-sour soup stud, and neither of you’s

put down your ante yet. So shit or get off the shu-mai, fellas.”

“Calm down and watch the road, Alan.”

“Who’s driving this heap, anyway?”

“I thought you were.”

“I thought Lawson was.”

“Don’t worry. This is a dodo-driven, autopiloted, cruise-controlled, Triple-

A-mapped, Flying-A-gassed, dual-overhead-cam, Super-Sofistifunktified,

Frijole Guacamole, Gardena Guahuanco, Chonk Chalupa Cruiser with

Buddha Bandit Bumpers, Jack!”

“Where we going, Alan?”

“Where do you think? We’re going to Paradise.”

IV.

On the Road to Paradise

Distances don’t matter

nor the roll of the road past walnut groves.

It’s sky that counts,

the color of it at dawn or sunset,

a match more true to the peach

than a mix of oils by Matisse.

Or maybe it’s actually the weather

we love most, the way it shifts

and scatters over the state

like radio waves bouncing off the face of the moon.

The one over there, near Yuba City,

rising over a backyard garden

of onions, tomatoes, squash, and corn.

The one with the spider

scrambling through celery,

harvesting moths and mayflies

from the web it has strung between stalks.

Sometimes I wish I could harvest the weather,

reap it like wheat or rice,

store it in a silo

announcing steady rain or clear skies on its sides.

When the prices rise,

I could ship hailstorms or Santanas in orange crates,

make Safeway go broke,

do something politically efficacious for a change.

But all I really do besides write these poems

is allow my mind to wander while I drive.

There it goes, down the arroyo,

through manzanita and Mormon tea.

Or there, up the mustard and Indian pipe on the hill.

Might as well let it.

Nothing but God and Country on the radio now.

Wolfman Jack’s syndicated and the Dodgers

haven’t made it to Vero Beach.

I wish this road would turn or bend,

intersect with a spy movie some Spanish galleon,

or maybe a Chinese poem with landscapes

in brocade, mist, wine, and moonlight.

This California moon is yellow most of the time,

like it was stained with nicotine,

or sealed in amber like an insect.

Why is it always better somewhere else?

Why do I always wish I were Tu Fu?

Palmistry Fantasia

There, the pasteboard and neon hand!

Just past the interchange by the bowling alley.

The one with silver rockets, small green stars,

and a trail of red comets flashing through the smog.

It’s still here, the hand

held up in greeting or command.

“Halt!” it says, or

“Peace be with you, brother,”

while the map across its palm

traces excursions into blue trees,

green skies, and mushroom-colored lives.

Blue dun is the color of its neon,

the same as the throat feathers of a teal

scudding over the marshes of Merced.

It matches the purple mascara the gypsy woman wears,

matches the pools of velvet-blue darkness in her eyes.

Her name is Alma Josephina,

and she designed the sign herself,

imitating the figure of her own hand,

the neon indicative of its natural aura.

That was twenty years ago

when Eisenhower was President

and all her customers wore pedal pushers

or Bermudas, and never noticed

the fireflies in the marshes at night.

You’re Oriental, aren’t you?

Can you read tea leaves?

I tried to once, years ago,

had a Chinese woman teaching me,

but her fees were too steep.

I like a joke.

It loosens up the customers.

Well, come here towards the light.

Let me get a good look

at the ghosts in the grave of your palm.

They’re there, you know.

All the people you’ve ever been,

all the trips you’ve taken

and the towns you’ve settled in,

back before the birth of Christ,

back before people were people,

before this paw was a hand.

You see? The whole palm glows

like purple mist over a cemetery.

Move closer. Clamp it around the glass.

See it flare on the inside?

That’s the light your bones make,

not the crystal at all.

Look at your hand now.

You can see yourself dancing

on the heel just above the wrist.

You must be a happy man.

You’ll be born again and again,

get to the threshold of Heaven,

never enter but keep coming back,

here, for fun, for friends,

until this will be Paradise,

and Paradise just an old resort

the highway’s passed by.

Well, have a nice trip.

You’ll make it yet.

Says so right in that curvy line

around the Mound of Venus,

that thumbstump there,

right where the long straight line

cuts across like an interstate.

VI.

Postcards Sent Home

Dust rolls out of the hills like fog,

and it’s too hot for shoes or shirts.

I’d like to take my hair off too,

peel it from my head, dip it in a bucket of ice,

and wear it around my neck like a bandana.

Crickets attend the night,

add a falsetto drone

to the sound of us

pissing in the tumbleweeds.

There’s a Tastee-Freeze in Fresno,

A & Dub’s closed down,

Jack-in-the-Box keeps popping up,

and McDonald’s owns the town.

Somebody’s drying tobacco leaves

on the laundry line.

There, see them furl

and flap next to the nylons?

A giant oak uncurls over the road,

sprinkles a fine yellow powder on the windshield.

The sun hits, touches it off

in a spasm of golden-red light.

VII.

Body & Fender/Body & Soul

At the grill, the Indian girl with buckteeth and dimples serves us a round

of coffee and sweet rolls. We’re waiting for the guy at Henley’s Texaco,

down the street, to find us a fan belt that’ll fit. It’s early, the sky’s still in

the john, shaving, and the sports page has to wait to get in. Everybody’s

grumpy. We sit around, jab at raisins with our forks, and try to look as

tough as the waitresss.

Her name’s Rita. Her brothers jump fires and pump

oil in Alaska. Her sisters string beads and make babies back on the Res.

Her ex is white, a logger who threatened never to come back and didn’t.

She doesn’t hold any grudges. That’s why she’s so nice, why she pops her

gum filling the salt and pepper shakers, why she adjusts her girdle so we

can see, why the egg spot on her dress doesn’t show.

Outside, the sun eases up over

the parking lot, scrambles across the freeway, and runs for cover behind a

pile of pumpkin-colored clouds. 99 starts shuffling its deck of cars and

pickups, getting set to deal a hand of nine-to-five stud. We don’t watch.

This is Redding, and ain’t nothing thing going on besides the day shift.

Alan says, “Look, there’s Venus,” and

points to a piece of light draining the sky. I want to order a country-

fried steak, talk about the Dodgers, but there isn’t time. Lawson hums a

few chords, stirring the changes with his coffee spoon.

Rita cruises back like

a bus bound for Reno, starts dealing some ashtrays. She says, “How’s it

going boys?”

I answer for all of us—“Hey, Rita. It’s almost gone.”

VIII.

Pilgrimage to the Shrine

Six hours since

the Paradise Cutoff

and running on empty.

No gas stations or rest stops,

no weigh station, no cops.

Just miles of straight road

and a long double-yellow

unrolling in front of us.

Alan recognized nothing.

Lawson pops the glove,

pulls out a penlight,

and fingers the map,

pronouncing a few mantras.

Our headlights slide

over a scarecrow

made of tumbleweeds

standing by the road.

He’s wearing a kimono,

a dark-blue stovepipe hat,

his shoulders cloaked

in a wreath of chrysanthemums.

We pull over,

back up,

and he disappears

into the pale-

grey darkness.

It’s smoke.

We can smell it,

so somebody’s

got to be

close by.

But our eyes

go blined, fill

with tears and ashes

as we stumble

down the off-ramp.

The smell of

frying trout

and steamed rice

reaches us when

we come to.

An old hermit,

dressed like the scarecrow,

crawls out of his barracks

and brings us tea.

“Drink!” he says,

“It’ll pick you up!”

And so we drink,

feeling drugged.

Soft blues

in the key

of sleep

suffocates the air.

From up the mountain,

the sound of obsidian,

flaking in the wind.

Clouds of black glass

waltz around us.

We dress ourselves

in shrouds of tule reeds

stitched with barbed wire,

stained with salt and mud.

We refuse to cry.

We drift back

to the highway,

holding our fists

like rattles,

shaking them

like bones.

IX.

Confessions of the Highway/The Hermit Speaks

I know the rituals, the spells of grapes,

the ceremonies of tomatoes, celery, and rice.

I know the color of wind dressed for fiesta,

and the names of carnivals in Spanish and Japanese.

I am familiar with the determination of campesinos

who migrate up and down the stretch of the state

in search of crops ready for harvest.

It’s all a dull ache in my back,

small cuts on the throats of my fingers,

and the alkali of a dry lake in my lungs.

For me, the oracle of the giant orange

always predicts good fortune,

yet, it never comes true.

My stomach is full of sand and tar,

a little bit of paint, a few crickets.

I stand in swampwater up to my hips,

and the stink of rotting figs

escapes my armpits in small brown clouds.

Scrub oak and tumbleweed sprout from my scalp,

make a small grove behind my left ear.

I don’t know why sparrows and starlings

refuse to approach me, to take the grass seed

tucked in the cuffs of my trousers.

Maybe it’s the stain of asphalt around my ankles,

this copper sheen of sweat on my back.

Sometimes, when the valley heat

makes the bones in my feet

start to hiss and burn,

the desire to escape comes over me again.

I can’t help it.

My arms pull down a few telephone posts,

my shoulders churn against the bindings.

I feel myself wanting to sit up,

begin to walk again, and thresh my way

across rice fields and acres of alfalfa.

For once I’d like to lift my face

straight above Shasta into the sky,

shout in unison with thunder,

roar with the assurance of Santana wind,

leap out of these bonds of copper and steel,

slough off this skin of cement,

and walk south or north or even west

into the weather and the sea.

Source: Yellow Light (Wesleyan University Press, 1982)