Un-shaven grey
boles of
Joshua Trees
explode
in green fists
against the pristine
powder-blue
sky
In the hot oldness
the road
snakes
through the knuckled land
Down its middle
a long yellow stripe
like a fuse
which might, if lit
blow-up
San Diego
Coyotes
on the road
stood scorching and watching
cream and tan
friendly and forgetting
to be nocturnal
Later we came to a high place,
where the land,
bare and hard-muscled
and measled with shrubs
fell into
a long, flat valley of still mist
the colour of amnesia
A hundred mile
smog
tentacle
conjured from far away
Los Angeles
On hilltops
on the
way back
thousands of windmills
fastened in ranks
mulled it over
in the
sunset
Text and photo 1997, Tim Gadd