About an hour from Los Angeles we pass the spot
where two weeks previously I’d seen the aftermath
of a collision. Two firefighters were joking
around, spraying suppressive foam across
dark patches of earth that had until recently been
on fire; the whole thing seemed meticulously staged.
In a photograph a man is washing blood away from
fish. A heavy knife is in the sink. His hands are
sticking to the insides of his latex gloves.
The sun grinds landscapes to a halt. It strips them
bare and crumples them like fabric, which sounds
like something Robert Hass would write.
Another picture shows a broken statue.
Large sections of the stone are missing so the stone
beneath becomes the statue’s surface. The figure
looks deformed, like she’s been caught in an explosion.
Out to my left, the orange groves give way to
massive oil fields; the lakes resolve a contradiction.
Driving back down to the city from
Sequoia National Park, I saw we must’ve passed
by the collision site again. I’d hoped that this
would turn itself into something that felt more
profound, like stepping into water
the same temperature as air.