Camino de Estrella

America, she was singing to you.
Down the entire length of Star Highway, no
brakes, salt haze lathering her face, the tune
nailed word to wind to hum to black road
and whoosh each time passing rhododendra,
each time passing palm trees taller than town—
lizards skittering beneath them, ant hills a mere
thought racing by—she was singing the sun
about to break through fog, all the way down
to cliff, rusty handrail, a set of stairs.

The shortest highway in America
carried her two miles west to the ocean.
Now she was stepping carefully down switchbacks
dusted with shell and feather, the ancient
concrete cracked and the cliff sand oozing, two
hundred feet down through the flights of swallows.
Now over train tracks, now over a beach
made over by wave, she was singing to you
swimming. Opening her eyes, stinging in the shallow
underwater swirl. It was the same beach

you promised, America. It listened
on and on to the complaint of breaking
surf, it took up kelp and running grunion
and gave them back. All day, a train could take
parts of one place to another, but this
place stayed, even as rain or tide re-shaped
its edges. Late afternoon, burned and tired,
she climbed back onto your back, up your cliff
to the bike hidden in weeds. She rode straight
home, dark Star Highway lifting her on its wires.