Dear Sebastopol - Iris Jamahl Dunkle

[Larry Robinson]

Dear Sebastopol -

Hard not to get dizzy, here, under tides of scent -
how they grade and terrace the air.

	salt thick tang of wet earth fat with limestone
	against sweet rot of wind falls.

Pine sap town built on stolen ground.
Wagon rutted streets. Hills once lush

	with redwood and oak, cleared
	to the root for acres of orchards.

Century-wide berths of scrub oaks
smoldering in the Laguna de Santa Rosa

	A train that carried its screaming
	weight down Main Street for nearly 100 years.

But the WPA mural on the post office wall
still frames the hard won promise:

	neat rows of apple trees
	flanked by white chicken coops.

Once, your accepted story swallowed me under its bell glass sky.

	Now I wake slowly. Learn to waver
	in the air above what history we’ve learned,

sense what’s pushing up underneath.

	- Iris Jamahl Dunkle
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