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Annie Stenzel
Erratics
So we’d be driving on the winding narrow road
in one big sedan or another, kids rambunctious
in the back seat—and don’t forget some of these trips
were before seatbelts were common
let alone required—and it would be hot
in the car, our bare legs sweaty on the vinyl
upholstery because of course air conditioning
wasn’t something my folks were prepared
to pay for. I don’t know that any of us had
sunglasses in those days—not us kids, anyway
which meant we were always squinting
as we stared out the window because
the skies were that intense mid-day blue and
it was really sunny in the Sierras, with maybe
a little extra brutality from the elevation,
and on one side of the road would be a cliff
with a sheer drop a long way down while
on the other side it was uphill, also
steep, but here and there on the glinting
granite there were these boulders
some of them enormous – rocks the size of cars,
just perched on the slope. And our dad,
who in those days really did know almost
everything, would say, “Look! There’s an erratic.”
And for some reason we would all get a little
quieter, because once he explained
how they happened, how a long-gone glacier
had, in its icy progress carving a path
toward its own disintegration, pushed
ton after ton of rock along, leaving
souvenirs that we now saw, tens of thousands
of years later. It really was quite
an amazing thing: geology!
alive and well
right there beside us on the Tioga Pass Road.
About the writer:
Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet who was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her second full-length collection, Don’t misplace the moon, was recently published by Kelsay Books. Her poems have appeared U.S. and U.K. journals including Atlas and Alice, Chestnut Review, Galway Review, Kestrel, Night Heron Barks, On the Seawall, Rust + Moth, Saranac Review, SoFloPoJo, SWWIM, The Lake, and UCity Review. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.
Image: Sand Dunes by Granville Redmond (1871-1935). Oil on canvas. 30 x 40 inches. 1911. Public domain.
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