Where it has been doing its
California imitation for months,
pretending that this green place, too,
is the land of little rain.

Where the unirrigated roadside
has gone golden, like much
of my home state.

Where the climate flip-flops
like a just-landed salmon,
the migrating ones heading
upstream that bears snag
like candy out of rivers
from here to Alaska.

Where I awoke, looking
out the window to a gray veil
swaddling the canal in—can
that be?—actual rain.

All morning I watched
the curtain slowly rise to
the arrowed tops of the pines,
then higher.

Where the gray lightened into
a question of sun, though,
of course, it was up there,
making its daily arc across
the sky, the one we humans
think of as ours,

as if we’re the fixed ones
being revolved around,
as if we have the answers.