Red is a lucky color, after all.
And the blood orange sheath
in the canyon behind my cousin’s
house is the first thing I remember
about California,
afterwards;
the anthills meticulously returned to a mountain
of glory, the cougars roam—
we know because our Pitbull barks a certain way
at what we perceive as a shadow, as nothing,
but we trust him, because other than interacting
with ticks, he’s rather clever, and does not die
when touched by human hands, like coral or
a red throated hummingbird’s hatchling,
just yesterday a white egg
the size of my pinky nail.
I sell my lungs breathing into money, give my money
into a fistful of Amazon credit, mea culpa, mea culpa
and now I am drinking a glass of red wine,
a recipe of crushing,
of stomping,
fermentation
scenting the wind
a good kind of death, that red.