No maps for these territories

There’s no sunset tonight; it’s just slowly getting dim. There’s no sunset; the sky still has the paleness of winter, not the blazing pinks and reds that will come later,
when the dust kicks up, when fields are dry.
Now they’re lush; clover growing an inch a minute,
everything green, miraculous. (New leaves on the grapevines, flowers where I didn’t plant them).
Remember these days, these nights of the air slowly getting chill and smells of wet grass, early barbecue,
remember when the days and nights are hot and dry and dusty.

These days I wish the lushness would last, as it did when I was small, growing up in damp forest
where everything dripped and was moist and was green. Then there were droughts, but there was also jungle. Here’s it’s expected
that the hills will grow brown, that you’ll water your lawn, that no rain will fall for months.
I miss summer storms, corn, things that need rain. Springtime in California is grand,
but I wish it would last.