Hiking the Sutter Buttes with My Father

We shield ourselves from noon sun
under scrub oaks. Eat carrot sticks, dry-cheese
sandwiches: below us, the highway.

This is sacred land.
Red earth and slow river,
where vultures sail unnoticed.

What I want to give you:
             minerals
             that explode,
             a map of stars.

I only hope mountains.

You help me to where
the wind lives, and below
California spreads the sky.
My arms are pale, body
losing its form,
in this long December,
I’m half-way to fourteen.

Above our great valley
I hear your deep laugh
talk to cattle; it almost shakes
trees, and I know I will
forgive you, everything.