Naming the Dead Places

Cienega Campground – Science Club planted sapling pines, you spooked a rattlesnake – all those hopeful pines rot now at the bottom of a reservoir. Alfalfa fields where you used to ride bareback, easing the math lessons out of your spine – fields diced now into “Drive” and “Court” and “Avenue.” Soledad Canyon, where you looked out the late-bus window in the dark for that one true-love star – it’s just a freeway exit now. Life extends its plains forever. Who rewrites geography, a child’s own history, when the place it happened doesn’t exist anymore?