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West of the Freeway

Sonoma County
Sept. 3, 2006

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Those lands west of the freeway
always seem a pretty good place to escape to.
Like the time we quit our jobs in L.A. and got married out there.

That was years ago, maybe 17.
We slipped out there another time
and set up house under towering redwoods,
in places where the river sometimes comes up
to see what's what.
We made babies out there,
and held them carefully
in wicker rockers on wooden porches.

And so it feels right to me
to spend Labor of Love weekend out there,
taking lunch here, a warm soak there,
a game of croquet with a prickly pig over there,
foregoing the need to ride Highway 80 with every truck on God's Earth,
to remind ourself,
the way church on Sunday might,
that there is more to life.