When I can, I bypass
Highway 580 West through
the scorching Altamont Pass,
best remembered for a 1971 Stones concert
marred by Hells Angels violence—
cause enough to dismiss
our Age of Aquarius.
On the brighter side, we were bequeathed
a carnival farm of innocent windmills,
their fan blades alchemically and practically
harmless, save for some raptors
dotting this scorched and vacant land.
Among them were American Eagles,
tapping the political conscience—
not for ecology, but for the eagle
as dying emblem.
Then Don Quixote appeared—
driving a golf cart beneath the turbines,
striking me like a well-hit Titleist
or a desert mirage from spiritus mundi.
Upon reflection,
I knew Old Don was researching
this property for yet another golf course—
perhaps the “Quixote Livermore Country Club,”
or something like that, remember, as in Genesis,
The naming is the creation.
Ed Coletti has been writing and publishing for almost sixty years and has published more than a dozen poetry collections. Currently, Coletti is working on what he expects to be his final book, a “magnum opus” on themes of living, aging, and dying. The title is A Tourist in Time. Ed is a graduate of Georgetown University and holds two master’s degrees, one in Creative Writing and Poetry (mentored by Robert Creeley) and the other in Business Management. Coletti poems also have appeared in ZYSSYVA, The Brooklyn Rail, North American Review, Volt, Spillway, and Modern Poetry Quarterly Review among very many other respected journals.
Photo credit: Quang Nguyen Vingh