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Column 752

California Hills in August

Intro by Ted Kooser
08.18.2019

Let’s hope that by the time this col­umn appears all fires in Cal­i­for­nia have been extin­guished. I want­ed to offer you a poem that shows us what that beau­ti­ful but arid state can look like before it’s caught fire. The poet, Dana Gioia, served as Chair of the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts and has been a friend to, and advo­cate for, poet­ry for many years.This poem appeared in the anthol­o­gy, Fire and Rain: Ecopo­et­ry of Cal­i­for­nia, from Scar­let Tan­ag­er Books.

California Hills in August

I can imagine someone who found
these fields unbearable, who climbed
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade.
 
An Easterner especially, who would scorn
the meagerness of summer, the dry
twisted shapes of black elm,
scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape
August has already drained of green.
 
One who would hurry over the clinging
thistle, foxtail, golden poppy,
knowing everything was just a weed,
unable to conceive that these trees
and sparse brown bushes were alive.
 
And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion,
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.
 
And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain—
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1986 by Dana Gioia, "California Hills in August," from Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, (Lucille Lang Day and Ruth Nolan, Eds., Scarlet Tanager Books, 2018). Poem reprinted by permission of Dana Gioia and the publisher.   Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.