City of Slow Rivers City of Slow Rivers draining from north and east. City of summer's long and hot, sweet discomfort of close to a hundred degrees. If you live here, you're savourous. You learn when to stay in and when to breathe evening's cool. If you hail from somewhere else, you might not understand. Sacramento summers a state of life, a way of mind. City of the capital, workers of a thousand kinds, workers legislative, workers social, workers judicial, financial, toiling for the golden state for the people. Filling up downtown, midtown, lobbyists and planners, agriculture, business, senators, representatives. Spending money perhaps like philanthropists, perhaps like kings. City of kings striving again to be kings. Weber and the great Serbs have moved on. But the others wait for transformation for that rookie who might ignite the floor because once there was fire. City of almost there, painful remembrance of things past. City of Mather and McClellan, Travis and Ville, City of the Air, City of the Force. City, your children grew up in. City they leave and return to where they ran in sprinklers, kicked balls, drove their first drive. City of the Fair, the Expo. Why is it all concrete? Not first city, not golden mountain. No, Chinese called it Yifao, second city. But a city built on gold nonetheless, tarnished then, still tarnished, still bright. County of suburbs and homes, parkway and farmland, for closures and furloughs, County of America, half red, half blue, hot in summer, waiting for rain and winter. City and County, reflecting world, African, Asian, European, Russian, Mexican and Ukrainian, Filipino and Meng and Lao and Pakistani and Indian, Yemeni and Afghani and Iraqi. People of this world making up this Sacramento, this sacred land, a world itself, baking in street food. Oh city, they tell me you broil in the summer and I answer, yes I have felt the deep bake of August way upon my heart. But show me another city without fresco evenings among the sounds of dove and jay. Show me another city with the world dancing in the faces of its dwellers. Show me a flat grid divided or united by these streams. Mild rains of winter, thousand streaming in their cars, reservoirs and wide streets, geese overhead and buildings full and empty flowing from the unfathomable seasons of money. I see all these pictures, decades of my life, and know that in this land of slow rivers, this desert filled with trees. Here I stay, for a home is something we define for ourselves with time, a home, each time to simply.