We had no oranges,
only a bagful of yellow green-speckled squash
from your mother's garden.
Back home now unfamiliar air,
we followed crooked lines
westward where the air was moist.
The sky was silver all the way,
the coastal range revealing itself to us simultaneously
for the first time and always.
Passing tomato trucks on a highway
neatly furrowing acres of corn and rice fields.
Passing horses on sparse hilltops.
Emerging from one geography to another,
like being born. Navigating instinctually
toward the unfamiliar.
What better way to embrace
a home than to sleep inside it?
The sunlight muted itself,
slipping through bedroom blinds,
covering me as you slowly pulled back the covers,
revealing my sleeping form, and compelling it
awake for the first time and always.
