My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

Diane Arbus

Where we are is where we've never been.

Ellen J. Langer

XXXV

Tuco looked across the valley before him.
A city of three million spread across once desert.
A new stretch of twenty freeway miles opens today
off in the far southeast nook of this sprawl.

He remembered the trips forty years ago
across this valley
when there were farms, Indian villages
and Japanese flower gardens along the road
north of those mountains in the south.
They came up the two lane from the south
and stop for soda or malts in the town
south east of that new freeway.

Then they'd drive on up that two lane
through farm land and desert.
Then a farm town in the desert
that supplied those farms with food,
clothes, medicine, and a railroad spur
for their products to move to market.

Then they'd drive on up that two lane
through irrigated farm land.
Then a farm town in the desert
that supplied those farms with food,
clothes, medicine, and a railroad spur
for their products to move to market.

Then they'd drive on up that two lane
through irrigated farm land.
Then a university town in the desert
that supplied those farms with food,
clothes, medicine, education,
and a railroad spur to move
their products to market.

Then they'd drive that two lane west
across the dry river and toward
those Japanese flower gardens along the road
north of those mountains.

Finally the "big" city north of those fields.
And, where Tuco stands now
was the north edge of that big city then.
Now it goes north as far as it goes south from here.
And farther to the west.

Coyotés still come here,
but fewer now
and moving cautiously.
The golf courses offer many rabbits
but also nervous city folk
working to keep their suburb natural.
Not native, just natural.