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Clint Frakes currently lives in Sedona, AZ. He has recently received the James Vaughan Award for Poetry and the Peggy Ferris Memorial Award for Poetry. He is a graduate of the Naropa Institute and Northern Arizona University writing programs and received his doctorate with emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Hawaii in 2006. He is currently working on his second full book of poetry, entitled Citizen Poems. 
 

 

                 Leaving California

“Burls and slabs on Thimbleberry Road”--
& the Jedediah Gorge rolls on to Gasquet & Klamath
under husky redwoods.
Siskiyou Fork: a gamelan of fir and camas lilies
wink from the mulchy haunts.
The forest’s breath steams & the gnarled stone walls
of Highway 199 bend to the seismic
folds of a feldspar corridor
aiming us north to Oregon.

Anonymous birds squawk from river thickets
& my chest tightens from chilidogs
at Denny’s in Crescent City.
The fog is thick in the evening limn
draping us like Miles Davis blue radio forays.
Orange poppies clustered on hillsides
disappear into the same evening glove
that took Japan yesterday,
& plucked Egypt like a waiting plum.
The passing roadside is replaced by a vision of Harry Smith
admonishing the Sphinx with raised cane.

This is the night of 10,000 eyes
amid wayward freighters’
grunting engines & burning brake fluid,
my nation steered into the fire by bandits,
my old Celtic heart pounding on its walls.