Valley Oak

I love what my mother cannot
love, gray dust, fruitlike
letters. I love your horribles,
too, the checkerboard grasses, all
my life I wished to be cooked 
on the steely patio beside weedy 
rosemary. I saw California, a low
red thing, and my fear inside 

like a piece of yeast. Evenings
I drank sour beer on pine 
slats built smartly to
jut from the house
throwing anchor long past 
the edge of anything calendrical.

I laid the stems of letters 
across wet pages. Does it
sit right at the hip? Is it
in key? Is it
mimetic? Is it 
lacy or sparking?
Is it speaking?

I might have packed it all
up, a beginning, an edge, a
rim, a rime, a shine.
It shone in her mind. Music
is just a job.

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“I was born in Minnesota but spent most of my childhood in California’s Central Valley, a region of big agriculture, oil drilling, and real estate sprawl—but also a landscape of beautiful small details, like the rosemary that sprawled untended across our backyard. The valley oak tree, endemic to California and common in my hometown, is described by arborists as ‘messy but beautiful.’ I wanted to see how a poem might stir up some messy details about life and language through the oak’s canopy.”
—Julia Bloch