 Ranch Spanish Ma Stringy carried golden California hills in his pockets and red-tailed hawks in the locks of his curly young hair. The tapestry of his childhood wore threadbare sage blouses and orange honeysuckle earrings. Feared rattlesnake boots and cow hide belts and cowered under the daunting shadows of dying pine pitch-infected Monterey pines that creaked in the wind. In this scenario John Wayne was the villain every lilt and hip-stride and active male slap in the face a violent retelling of what he would never be but should be. He grew up in a barn. It was renovated to resemble a home, but the inhabitants knew they were not but a nay away from a hee-ha reality. While their inflections were professorial, they free-based carnal monstrosity. Bare teeth snarling when cornered a dog-eat-dog kitchen table where the world was reassembled into Ted Nugent songs and cataclysmic losses of shit that never existed in the first place. His sister was his accomplice. His exact opposite in many ways. But when they got along they didn't, but they got along until they didn't and the times were good until they weren't. Life happened, paths diverged, time passed as it's want to do, things became more complicated. School, love, pain and all the rest and they returned much later as different people, but still the same. And changes changed until it's common place and then it's only drastic changes that are noted. Different hair color, loss of a limb, missing teeth, deep depression. And so they caught up on the nuts and bolts when it came time to return and realized they were much the same people as they always were, though older now, but no less raw. Father was a man of science. What you see is what you get. Behind his eyes a what was never gotten. Saw his father cry once in the midst of unknowns. Career had ended due to physical ailments. Born from boredom driven repetition and a genetic disease that his son would eventually get as well. His thumb started shaking and surgeries that he had successfully performed on animals for 30 years began to fail. He had talked about going into zoology like a kid talks about becoming an astronaut. Eyes lit up, purity of smile, all yeses, all possibility and it lasted a day and then it was gone. The vacancy sign flickered on behind his eyes once again that pulsating red glow, that undulating recognition that guests were far from arriving. There were a lot of losses in their relationship, but this is the one that caused him to lose respect for his father. Though he understood the whys, he realized his father's frailty paired with fear, understood the closed-mindedness and Fox News story. Fear, what a thing. Not long after a Monterey pine fell, smashed through a section of the fence. The cows were let loose and they found them grazing on the lawn when they awoke in the morning. Later, when sectioning the tree with the chainsaw, the boy had seen a gardener snake that had been killed by the felled tree. Its head smashed by the trunk, its body curled in coital preparation to feed a mouth that could never be reached. Mama was omnipresent, always checking in, in an obtrusive way, somewhat obsessive. He and his father suspected Mama was bipolar when they were old and distant enough to reflect. She liked to call them morons and affectionate yet altogether damaging ways. They weren't sure if it were these dysfunctional bouts of afflicted affection that caused them to constantly doubt their intelligence and overall self-worth. That would be too much to pin on one woman. And with assistance, they realized that she had simply done the best she could with what she had been given. But he knew this sort of excuse could be used for all sorts of fucked up dysfunctional people who take out their childhood traumas. On their unsuspecting children. And so later they called it what it was, unacceptable, and noted the instances with dreadful consciousness when they too tore through people with uncomfortable, uncontrollable anger via fear. Those hot summer days were spent overlooking dry hills, wrestling tall grasses, the smell of asphalt and hay, cool terracotta tiles on covered porch. Mama's tea would be steeping in the hot sun, the cotton-liptoned tea bag strings drying brown liquid upward and over the lip, the lemons unfurling like flower buds. The blackbirds would sit under what cover remained of the pine trees chattering, and the blue-bellied lizards did push-ups on flaking white fenceboards. Multicolored petunias, honeysuckle vines, swallow nests with chirping babies just under the roof of the overhang, and the constant flurry of activity back and forth from the anxious parents trying to feed their young. Father would exit the squeaking screen door of the house, BB gun in hand, the poof poof of the gun, the dropping clay fragments of nest, the fleeing parents dropping babies. The tea would be done in a matter of time. Later in life, he would hear the term unconditional love and knew that he or his sister had never experienced this from either of their parents. There were always conditions, hurdles to be leapt over, goals to be met, activities to partake in. Butting selves were sewn into household fabrics spun by two studious parental spinsters. Locks of their hair falling forward sweat-soaked from frantic movements toward unknown but somehow urgent goals. What will come of the children? Iron bars and shock collars never rang freedom, though. He preferred wide open spaces devoid of people. Only then could he taste the elusive quotidian, that spark of nonchalant yes-ness. Behind the house, the washer outlet poured frothy gray water down an open dugout canal and along the roots of a row of Montre Cyprus. Western toads congregated, preferred tide and post-wash, a cacophony of calls would arise from the back of the house. He would run to the back, pick one toad up each time, and hold it still in his miniature hands. He often spoke to the toad in private, knowing that he would be made fun of if his father had seen him. Luckily, father was always working, and many long conversations between toad and boy were had. The toads never had much to say, but they were good listeners, and they seemed to like to snuggle into the warmth of his palms. He'd tell them everything was okay, and he'd pretend they said the same thing back to him, which calmed him and gave him numerous allies. At times when he was older, he would run the washer machine on empty just to bring out his friends. But as the years went on, something changed, and his friends became fewer and fewer in number until the sound that followed the wash was the mere trickle of water. He missed them, but he never shared this. Dry tinder bore snakes. Piles of firewood abounded. He piled it on, but never took it off. Too much fear, too little need. Early winter collection and Ursula Sarellens' caps peeked through scattered pine needles at the base of musty, fog-dusted wood piles. The snakes were deep underground then. The weather wrapped him tight in its cool embrace, and a fire was constant, ever running, long as parents were away. He would light it as he had seen done many times. Twisted paper, piled kindling, tepid logs, the crackle and flame, the first initial warmth. He'd sit for hours watching match light paper, paper and gulf kindling, kindling eat away at logs, and then it was all one big flame and the crackle and pop, and he'd step outside on the porch and the fog would be rolling in over the hills. And the dampness met wood fire smoke, and the wooden floors would warm themselves under copper fireplace hood. And he would watch the oak trees disappear one by one into the dragon mouth of fog. And he would close that heavy-paid porch door. The clank of the brass door knocker won moment of finality. And he was safe, and the world was gone. And the frenzied pace had lessened the people calmed down. And he was safe, he was safe, safe. Those hills burnt one day, lit fire from the burning body of a Canadian goose that had hit the power lines, burst into flame and fell to grass. He watched those hills burn under deep black smoke, thought of the mice he had followed as a child running for their lives, thought of grasshoppers too slow to flee, thought of the snakes that he had so feared and wished they didn't need to end this way. No one should. His parents frantically prepared their house, readied their cars, protected the material possessions, and this was the difference. And he wanted to just watch and give thought to the lives that were being lost, and he wanted to walk into those flames, breathe in that smoke. His home was burning while his barn was being fortified. And his allegiances were elsewhere always, never home here but there, under canopy amongst burning embers alongside tragic endings. And he would pile bodies of his friends after the fire, watch California sunset take another day. And on rare occasions while alone in those hills he would hear his friend call, returned from some long journey, and he would smile. And there was no tide this time, no grey water. But his friend dared the scorched earth, dared the heat. And in that moment everything was okay. Thank you. How much do I have? Is that five more minutes? Is that too much? Okay, I have a really dark cow piece some of you have heard already, so it would be a repeat. It is quite dark. Are you feeling like going a little bit lighter? Which I don't have, but I could go lighter than that. Let me just do something quick. This is new. I just wrote this yesterday, so let's see how this goes. Reclamation. Oceans under great white sailing, tabletop mountains, sand fleas, southeasterly winds, zebra baboons, stone cacti, Roy Bosch, Bunny Chow to Bill Tong, Pop and Vlaist to slab chips. All that once was returns. Wear this soil in crown. Silksage, cocoa soil, amber tufted grass, roll up and over fog, frozen creeks, mighty oaks, miner's lettuce. Spanish moss floating in fog's butted breeze. The haunting of bullfrogs from mud puddle canyons, the size of fists. Fog stands sentinel on hilltop, dog, porch, watchful before the plunge. And downy, hands-own quilts tucked tight under chin. All that once was returns. Wear this soil in crown. To have lived so many lives before this one. Long lineage of matriarchs and handsy men, mother's father's hands, bodies pressed tight. Catalan envelopes carry so much weight. Letters, grandson, stamped. Guy's grandpa duked it out with ocean waves of apparitions, drank to medicate, the great inhales. His daughter screams woven into life jackets made of stone. So much unanswered, those distant present moments shelved with sun. To understand mother pain over long-steeped tea. Son hopes that mother rests now, though still alive. Hope's mother rests, though still alive. Mother rests. All that once was returns. Wear this soil in crown. When father is father because his father and his father, the succession of one to the next with disregard for the regality of being, the collective survival technique, journaling the violences of birth, love for grandfather, father's father, no inappropriate touch, the slight of hand generationally overlooked. Love is witness to all. The before's, the after's, the in-betweens. Body core love to those that exist navigating the multitudes in one. The many before, the many to come. That goose-step march painted despotic dry. How glorious the break, wondrous the opening. Existing unlike the rest. How glorious the break, wondrous the opening. Existing unlike any of the ancestors. Upon their shoulders and despite them. And with you and you and you. Here with so many amongst and within and never alone. Father of mother, mother of mother. Father of father, mother of father. Father mother. To the inseparable us offerings of forgiveness and love. All that once was returns, where the soil and crown. All that once was, ever was, where the soiled crown. Thank you.