oasis

//nels hanson

At corner of Highland Avenue
and Mountain View at the stop
beside Fenucchi’s always dying
magnolia tree many cars had hit
you looked south along the road
named the Hanford Highway to
the palm tree miles away Jesus
might have rested under turned
bright and blurred by distance
and across black asphalt a blue
mirage like an oasis in the heat
and always I yearned for that
pool and palm. The water would
evaporate as you approached,
burning cellophane or shadow
of gas fumes from a can, just
before you arrived disappear in
air. In hot country thirsty eyes
like homing pigeons I raised
seek and then return to water
or the dream of water and shade,
a cooler air even when a child’s
clear vision understands what’s
seen and vanishes is the picture
of another world delectable your
father’s car can’t reach in time
miles always failed to measure.

//Nels Hanson grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley and has worked as a farmer, teacher, and writer-editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, and 2014. Poems appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pacific Review, and other magazines, and his poetry received the 2014 Prospero Prize from the Sharkpack Review and 2014 Pushcart nomination.