<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Dear Sebastopol -<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Hard not to get dizzy, here, under tides of scent -</div><div class=""><i class="">how they grade and terrace the air.</i></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>salt thick tang of wet earth fat with limestone</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>against sweet rot of wind falls.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Pine sap town built on stolen ground.</div><div class="">Wagon rutted streets. Hills once lush</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>with redwood and oak, cleared</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>to the root for acres of orchards.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Century-wide berths of scrub oaks</div><div class="">smoldering in the Laguna de Santa Rosa</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A train that carried its screaming</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>weight down Main Street for nearly 100 years.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">But the WPA mural on the post office wall</div><div class="">still frames the hard won promise:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>neat rows of apple trees</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>flanked by white chicken coops.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Once, your accepted story swallowed me under its bell glass sky.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Now I wake slowly. Learn to waver</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>in the air above what history we’ve learned,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">sense what’s pushing up underneath.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Iris Jamahl Dunkle</div></body></html>