My California Calls Me Home

By Shonda Sinclair

My California welcomes this native daughter
home on freeways split
by medians of eucalyptus and oleander
where speed limit construction zones warn 55
and golden morning sun streams onto my dash

My California is dripping with juicy oranges
hanging in groves that murmur to me of dolls
and playing in the dirt under those trees while
grandparents hulked and climbed picking ladders
wiping dirty sweat on soiled aprons

My California smells like cattle ranching and dairy farming
the pungent scent of manure and grazing fields lifting
up and into my passing windows while
lowing in unison reaches my ears and
silohs reach for the sky

My California brings the sharp, fruity bitterness
of fresh pressed olive oil to roadside market stands
amid vast acres of silvery green spiked leaves
on fat, full heritage trees that remember
their Spanish cousins who first planted them in this soil

My California calls me, remembers me, rocks me in its
embrace where the exact center is marked by palm next to pine and a slivered moon peeks in weak glow
through the famous wall of Tule fog buffeting
my car as I sail down this freeway for old home.