DEAR CONGRESSMAN

Out here in the California heartland
beyond the peeling billboards
that once announced
every fruit and vegetable
capital of the world
removed from Highway 99,
swapping crops
for air conditioned shopping malls –
neutered Valley towns
given-up their figs
to farm people instead,
I can’t tell Turlock from Modesto.

Out here between the furrows where
every Mom and Pop grocery store,
fruit stand, bar, bait and tackle shop
under one flat roof is boarded-up,
old gas pumps frozen
like soldiers from the Fifties
waiting for a windshield
or dip-stick to check
or if the kids are over
the mumps or chicken pox yet.

And Congressman,
I know we can’t go back –
that the rest of you must
have great big plans
we can’t comprehend,
that you all have your own dream
of what you can do with the harvest:
your ledger of plastic magic debts –
but what happens
when the tree grows
too far from its roots?

We are the tendrils
burrowing in the dirt where
what little water left
is pumped into food
we can’t sell at a profit
anymore
and I was wondering
how do we fit your vision
of the new millennium?
How are you going to keep us
producing
like numb milk cows to stanchions
without kicking down
with a little more cash
or bigger rations?

Or have you dealt us out
for some fresh field workers
not yet addicted to
electricity or TV,
never driven a tractor or new car
or had to pay
license and insurance yet
with nothing to lose
but their innocence?

Dear Congressman,
I couldn’t sleep again tonight
trying to figure how it’s going to work
and thought I’d write and ask you
before
I invest another decade in the soil:
how in the hell can we stay
to pay the bills and still
subsidize your consumption?
You don’t need my vote
and not enough will hear
whatever good or bad I might say
about you to matter,
but I thought I’d ask
one human to another:
do you really have a plan?

Not much has changed. Written in 1998 and included in “Poems from Dry Creek” (Starhaven)