Saturday Walk in Crockett, California, By Gary Soto

In this town the weeds grow wilder than kids,

Then flatten in fall. It’s fall now,

And a friend and I, bored with the holes

In our souls are walking up and down

The streets looking for breaks, scars,

A jackhammer splitting black crumbs of asphalt.

No one rips a yellow bedsheet in two,

No one peels the bacon strip of Band-Aid;

No one coughs or bothers about the holes

In the street. They care even less

About us, or the blue-eyed dogs that follow,

Then fall off. The cartwheeling paper bag

Holds more interest. We feel the same,

And climb a hill to admire the C & H sugar plant,

Black with the shadow of workers.

White smoke unravels from a stack.

Metal clicks. Yellow forklifts,

Those dinosaurs that run on gas

And a good kick, are coming alive.

This town does make noise after all.

We climb down on the heels of our dusty shoes

And at the entrance to the factory

A guard stops us. We ask about tours,

But he points to the museum across the street.

We go there to stare at photographs

Behind glass, quilts on the wall,

Piles of sugar on scales, bathing beauties

Of fly-flecked calendars. We pay homage to

Six blow-ups of the town’s favorite son: Aldo Rey.

We handle horseshoes and ball bearings,

Grip the spokes of monstrous wagon wheels,

Study blue teacups, more photographs,

More piles of sugar--relics hauled

From abandoned houses. When we leave

The museum guide rattles a packet of sugar at us.

We thank him and he thanks us,

And the three of us stand for a moment

Smiling a lot of different ways.

We leave, then, and walk up one street.

No kids in the front yard,

No men in the back yard under arbors.

It’s quiet. The leaves, buckled red by fall,

Make more noise. We return to the car

To sit on the fenders.

We like this town. It doesn’t talk too much.

Their radios tremble low behind curtains

And old men empty the benches at noon.

Nothing is for show. The lawns are shaggy,

The trees are haywire.

Worry is no more than flattened grass,

Maybe one less paycheck when the Teamsters

Go on strike, maybe a bad transmission

In a good car. The people work hard,

Sweat. In turn, the plant does its best

To sweeten the air.

From “Who Will Know Us?” by Gary Soto (Chronicle Books: 72 pp., $8.95)