THREADS

                        Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
                        You don’t ever let go of the thread.
                                      – William Stafford, (“The Way It Is”)

Out on Highway 99, silhouettes of semi-trucks
appear in the fog, grow into tiny lights ahead
or leer, big-eyed from behind in a blind rush –

up and down the Valley – like trains submerged,
caravans tunneling this thick and gray resistance
to time’s unfolding as the road grows longer.

The Real Birds came visiting in their Cadillac
and laughed at how I measured miles to Fresno
by the clock, grinning from a grounded dimension.

Our thread is not a straight line connecting cities,
but meanders more like a creek with gravity –
with the flow or against the current to its source.