I am flying back after a week visiting my home and family
in the green cathedrals of Ohio, lovely heartland of
soft green hills and green-frilled woods, cloud-shadows
roving pastoral fields of tasseling corn and grazing cattle,
where every village and town has a church at its center.
United Flight 1294 begins its descent into San Francisco.
Below: balding mountains, sun-dried, and scrubby;
basin of the Bay brimmed with a corona of dirty air;
hectic patterns of sub-divisions, cities, and freeways;
in the rusty grass along the tarmac, tattered plastic
bags that look uncannily like graft-ready human skin.
The plane touches down. Still peering out the window,
I marvel and shake my head, then laugh. What can explain
how glad I am to be back in California, how much I love
this intense, hard-driving, opposite, green/ungreen place,
this totally other place I also call home?
Ann Keiffer/September 2012
Photo Credit: repurposemylife.com
