Motherlode   We drove along the highway, she sleeping, me thinking and listening to radio talk, stories of war, stories of flood, and loving her, and then she woke and we rattled on, dodging the time before us, talking of people and gossip, theories, and nothing, listened to music. Trucks thundered past, and sandstone ravines, and then Sydney, oiled and sinuous in afternoon light, full of memory and conspiracy. Later, in our beachfront room we peered through glass at the looming peerless moon who spilled her milky essence on the dark sea, and above— planes’ industrious ant lights scribbling the…