journey down south

Dust devils and delapidation dot this california countryside
where the ground thirsts and moans
as the sky opens up to beat the sun on down
This need for chopped wood and random irrigation,
power lines crisscrossing like umbilical cords,
connecting these less-than-zen szborra
with their abilities to move their god-grown goods.
Waste piles around the salvage lots and fruit packing plants
where the ugliness of mechanism and transport
interrupt my natural appreciations.
Filing past land that looks long worn,
acres well marked and marred for their plantings,
debris and old cars line the hwys where people drive past
to somewhere without looking;
Ugliness the omni-present byproduct of
commerce running wholy amuck with our ecosystem.
This is not the farmland i remember as a child.
There i could go entire days without seeing cars move
and could truthfully commune with the trees and the fauna
who were my only line of sight,
my friends the blissful foresters.
Instead, the industrial wasteland of Fresno,
a once-fine farmer's hellhole,
is where the old homes and monstrous buildings crowd around
like unpersonified overlords of the crops they are eagerly displacing.