Southeast of Fresno as Los Angeles Burns

by

Catherine Abbey Hodges

Not yet mid-January
but here’s the vetch, stretching
up through the beige sycamore leaves
at ease on the winter-killed grasses,
tendrils reaching for light
and a purchase.
Obscene
the placid beauty of this day
in these foothills. It’s the oldest
guilty secret: the way life spools on, tromps
along, anyway. Cup of water from the tap.
Backlit geraniums in their uncracked
terra cotta pots. The inhale
I think nothing of.

Catherine Abbey Hodges is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Empty Me Full (Gunpowder Press, 2024), and two chapbooks. Her first book, Instead of Sadness, won the 2015 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize; recent poems appear in such venues as Narrative, Plume, SALT, Plant-Human Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, and CALYX. English Professor Emeritus at Porterville College, Catherine writes, teaches privately, and collaborates with musician Rob Hodges on ancestral Yokuts land.