A Prose Poem I Wrote Driving Back From Lake Tahoe

Waves

Growing up in Reno, I spent my time dreaming of the ocean. Our ranch wasn’t very big, the land was big enough but we had only a few cows and an old steer with brown spots and irritable eyes; remnants from my Grandfather, who lived off of his cattle. My father works construction though, and while he rose through the ranks to a middle management position, the herd wilted. Me and the leftover beef would sit on the edge of our property, stare in between the three wires that made a fence, and watch out over the salt flats. Pure white. Endless white, even though I could see the far side where brush and yellow grass rose from the parched dirt, what I really saw were waves, falling at our fence. I assembled the ocean puzzle from movies and photos, and then I watched it form in front of me, blue springing from the salt and rolling out white.  Now in the tomorrows of my life, after work dad and I come home and I sit by the three-wired fence, with just the steer, and I try to remember how to see the ocean.