Ode to My Canyon River Blues (Jeans)

Barbwire snagged the left knee and I
had torn it turning away from a stile,
nearly losing balance while sloughing
through the black mud of a backtrail
curving behind a taro farm
nestled in a Big Island valley.

During a California drought, the right
knee split open as I knelt and rose
repeatedly to load a slow-rolling
pickup an orchard’s worth of almond
and pistachio logs chainsaw-downed
into firewood on Tracy’s outskirts.

Staining high on the inseam, grease
smears from the first trisykel
ride on the rising dust and skipping
stones of San Mateo’s wending mountain
roads that Philippine summer.

Talk story

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