26 The Meadow Those Seen Driving West Melanie Perish We travel California 37, Sears Point Road inland past Vallejo, the sky smooth with raw-silk clouds. Through my window flats near the overpass. There may be birds, but I see three small tents, one patched with duct tape; a man wearing two coats, carries a duffle, a plastic sack. Marks of ragged, no wings in sight. You look out your window, think you see a raft of canvasbacks, but we are late. You wonder if you will ever be able to show me the locked-lace and waxy feathers up close. We see no spindle-legged sanderling, no deep diving duck. Some lives are not wild, but both visible and invisible. Are they forgotten? It is too late for yellow-headed blackbirds to mate and raise young. Dirty white deli-bags blight the roadside, blur by. A leather-faced woman walks the narrow dirt shoulder. Her back to us, she pulls at her camo jacket, adjusts the straps of her pack. Ahead, a turn twists like rope through belt loops, like the serpentine neck of a heron. We stop for gas and bathrooms before Guadal Canal Village. You read me facts about salt ponds, terns, a snowy something. I do not see most of what you say.
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