California Presence Poem by Stephen Bennett The Playjurist

California has changed my mind
pulling strings of thoughts
beginning this morning in bed
listening to the dialogue of a TV movie
without eyes opening to its scenes.

Into the darkness of my head came
a curiosity that often does.
When listening to Becky talk
about her family out here
with each name she spoke

in the recounting of that or this,
a representation formed in me
that would play the part of each one
though I'd seen pictures of them.
Everyone does this.

None of these head people had
an appearance. I experience
Becky's memories in a way
that connects the need in me.

California has changed my mind.
From under the covers lifting up
for a peek. The look of the story I had
been listening to had surprising features.
This time was different I must

have been different too somehow. I think
California has changed my mind.
What raised me to the edge of bed
hours before the sun could rise
and start me off to California

even though I had never seen it
either before or after, or ever in my life
but the vision of my own selfhood,
which I have known too much
was becoming itself imaginary.

Living in the east, mostly in Buffalo.
getting west was the main key
to happiness. People planned
for California, and acted not
only like they'll be leaving jail

they would be waking in a new dimension.
and most I've never heard from again,
and contrasts among third party impressions
out here surprise me so. I now know
in striking ways when I heard mention

of out here it would play through me.
the way me and Becky sleep with TV
on through the night, but this time different
because out here, this California is not
the same as California is where we're from.

It's not the end of some rainbow,
it's a trip of too many hours.
From here it's barely a destination
It's more a chore to be done. With one
of her family standing with me

in the Washington state rain, and the mountain
ghost, Rainier, somewhere behind the clouds
looking at the brown grass around us, he said,
'It's starting to look just like California here too
but what are you going to do? '