Outside Pasco

One-story hotel, one blip on the highway that splits

my state in half. Dust, fuzz of mariachi, forest

of electric towers, this is that Washington.

High school soccer teams speak Spanish,

scrimmage all August against each other

and evening. Against being

one mote in the optical illusion

of trellised rows, a tiny body

in a pinpoint of light—light that stays put

even as you drive by if you train your eye on it.

The Columbia River is combed out

into vines, aisles like lines on an open palm.

You never feel how it closes around you

if you are just passing through.

In the Oasis RV park and hotel, people sleep

through the hot part of the day. Sleep,

an empty highway shimmying up

into blue—the land so flat,

most of what's there

turns out to be sky.