dream ranch

I’ve read what I wanted to in the papers and drifted into an old Paris Review interview with Susan Sontag. Cowboy, whose cancer has spread, is sleeping below me. I hope he is dreaming of rabbits.

I woke up thinking of a stretch of Highway 395 in California, running up the Owens Valley between the Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains, a ribbon of road on brown earth under blue sky. I once worked there, from Round Valley down to Lone Pine. I remembered how hard it was to leave it the last time I visited, for a 2012 reunion, veering east near Big Pine, to head over Westgard Pass and home, the Sierra and the valley remaining in my view to the top of the Whites.

I drifted in my waking to the Georgia O’Keeffe painting “Road past the view II,” hanging over my head on the bedroom wall. I daydreamed of visiting both places, the Owens Valley and Abiquiu, in spring and concept.

Later, as I made coffee, I saw Cowboy out the backdoor, leaning against the stucco wall, sheltered from the March wind, soaking up sun. Cabezon stood out above him, 50 or so miles west under blue sky. A ribbon of road will get you there.