This time, I'm not driving while I write.

Instead, I sit the romantic height and cadence of a horse.
Like the orphaned cowboy in Cormac McCarthy's epic trek
through Old and New Mexico, I flank the Sangre de Cristos;
the bony tail of the Rockies swats my rearview mirror.

A Winnebago wheels in front of me,
as if a cardboard box with "Wilderness" on its side
moldered in everyone's garage, waiting to take a drive,
as if aurora borealis were a TV's glimmer from inside a mobile home.

To help fool me into belief,
three maple leaves blow behind the word
like a murmuration of starlings: exotic, invasive--
a wilderness of maple leaves in the desert.

In this country of underdogs,
an unexpected win at the superbowl is a national victory.
The fans go wild, like lushes at the corner bar
who toast a Democratic triumph after years of bitter loss.

And Julia Morgan, first woman allowed in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
studied steel-reinforced concrete, hauled the idea to California,
and exposed the beams of her masterpiece--Hearst Castle.
Her vernacular leftovers: all the pretty houses in Berkeley.

Herrick's "Thanksgiving to God for His House"
comes on the radio--I mean to mind.
The contents of His House: the wilderness, the Sangres,
the pretty horses, even winter in this coastal valley.

In winter in this heavy valley
I labor to find the shred of pink light
that dwells in fog--something
to hold onto, to sink into

like heels to the horse's side.