I wrote this as a paragraph a month or so ago, thought it felt kinda like a poem, so I broke it into lines and polished the language a bit, and it now seems to fit here:

West and East from Vallejo

I thought I¹d disguise my earlier post as poetry

When I first migrated to California
the drive from Vallejo to San Francisco
wound through hills that in winter and spring
were lush green emblazoned with wildflowers,
through tiny towns: Hercules, Rodeo, Pinole.
In summer, months after the last rains,
The hills were golden brown and the divine sculptor-- the late afternoon sun--shaped them into voluptuous flesh,
as Edward Weston did to green peppers.
Now the hills are pimpled with houses and shopping centers
and the stench of smog hides
the lowtide smell of the bay¹s remaining wetlands.
Head northeast out of Vallejo:
there are yet miles of such hills stretching
to the Sacramento valley at Vacaville:
There, once glorious farms are now Factory Outlets,
subdivisions, gas stations, and chain cafes.
At long last, after Davis, the farms appear again--
but for only the few short miles to the Sacramento River.
Across the bridge is the state capitol:
It shares the river¹s name, but while the river¹s waters
stayed safe for swimmers the city¹s sprawl and merging highways
stopped traffic dead.
Cars sat, maybe inched forward, then sat again,
motors running, belching noxious fumes.
Freeway bypasses let the traffic move again
helping rid the air of poisons
that made L. A. air seem sweet.
But moving freeways mean malignant growth:
You continue east: another fifty miles of pustulent suburbia then you reach the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
where the forests are recycled
into newspapers and Christmas catalogs.

--seed