A Beautiful Flash, For Now, Forever

The Berkeley hills, last night: rain poured out of the fog like from a river—tore up roots and washed leaves and worms into the street. The worms, wet and willful, squirmed and inched over the pavement like living filaments, iridescent and scared. Lightning.

A car drove closer—I heard nothing through the downpour—and its headlights illuminated the texture of fog. Crawling, it bounced through a rain-full pothole—the pool spread, contracted—and passed. Raindrops jumped in the hole-pool—in the air over the street—everything red in the back-car-light.

Darkness.

I walked to a glow—a streetlight—and stood in the gold-white rain, soaked and breathing:

"Green is Gold"

Night.

Lightning illuminates the rain like a camera flash captures 

a picture all of San Francisco admires

at once,

a still-frame shot of

love of violent wind, unframed,

named by parents ‘unsafe’ and teenagers ‘the night I totaled my

body.” Exposed limbs of eucalyptus trees crack and burn despite

the wet

leg I slip into your car, soaked,

thrilled,

First Autumn Morning

The sun breaks over the hills. Orange light pours through a saddle, illuminates pampas grass and the spines of fallen leaves. Leaves surf on a gust of wind, fall, swoop up, turn. Flap like frantic birds. The dry grass quivers.

Photo by Mike Emmett

The leaves, the grass, my hands: everything seems brittle, stiff. Cold. It is cold—for the first time since I moved here—and the morning haze looks solid, almost. As if it were composed of that orange sunlight, compressed.

Composed of light.

The sun floats higher—untouches the horizon so fast I can see it move. They red-gold horizon fades to white, then blue.

Justin and I walk along a paved road, and where it turns to dirt we step down onto the Bay Area Ridge Trail (BART). 550 miles long, the BART circumvents the Bay over the crest of the hills. Today, we begin our 550-mile walk.