And All

On my way to work at the computer company I stop my bicycle at the intersection of El Camino Real and Stanford Shopping Center to look full circle—the horizon of buildings trees and streets under the high fog cast into light in the summer morning At these red and green lights everything meets, or crosses paths Along the great passageway cars and trucks push through green lights crossing over the wooded creek, pushing under the tracks where a commuter train roars from the station— Somewhere between and intermingled the old oak twisted over the corner the tower of the sanitarium above the trees the parking lot and the soccer field A line of trees arches over a black man an old lady, a Chicana, waiting blankly for a bus— In this circle is the path and the tree the route of discovery and the resting place for Portola who found San Francisco Bay in 1763 looking for Monterey— The huge redwood bereft of limb The Ohlone Indians converted to oblivion after a millennium of their own ways— And most of us, gazing through glass, want to be somewhere else— In pursuit not of happiness but success