Rabbit and Rose
There is no Redding at the end of the road
that skirts the levee top,
Schellville down to Wingo where the pavement stops,
graveled past the last remaining cabins east side of the bridge.
Then, leans right through a locked gate past China Slough,
unwinding across a sinking island to the Big Ditch,
where flat-bottomed gaff-rigged schooners loaded summer hay
and sailed back on the ebb
through San Pablo to San Francisco Bay.
Camp 3,
where Jackie Meyers, God rest his gentle soul,
grew up chasing dust devils, steelhead, and ducks,
where I used ride shotgun in my daddy's Jeeps,
hunt, and fish,
and drive him back at the end of his days
to where the road, un graveled, veers East at the gum wood,
then, climbs straight up the levee top
to where he fished for the ones that got away,
the endless sparkling days that muddy slide,
San Pablo to San Francisco Bay,
then out,
out to shining sea
where all the water my father and Jackie Meyers fished,
where all of us will gather,
at the end of Redding Road.