heard it from a friend you were messing around
Grapevines and Central Valley heat
Cumular columns standing guard
The desert beaten beneath

Thunderstorms and
lightning caught by the horizon
distance makes it safe
and beautiful

Under the cover of a train station platform
with the drying redolence of ozone
recently flashed and deluged earth
ephemeral sluices and pools sopped
quicksilver in vanishing retreat

put me there with today’s brain
just for a snap
and that’s what memory is.
Overwriting the initial experience
always with the fog of distance
and the clarity of apparent wisdom gained

does that sunfilled drizzly moment remain
because of what I was thinking precisely then?
or is it copied into crazy contortions
distorted from the original cut

hazy reverb
autotuned into absolute pitch
by time’s perfect ear
a greatest hit engineered by millions
of tiny producers?