The View from Windy Hill 

Like most vistas in preserves around here,
this one looks east toward San Francisco Bay: 
surrounded by buildings, spanned by bridges,
modern and sparkling in the distance. 

But if the bench atop this overlook
instead faced west, it would view wild land.
Conifers along the ridge (amazing
how the eye can discern a single tree

within a forest). Fields on the hillside –
the wind pushes through tawny grass, flowers 
gone to fluffy seedpod, copses of oak. 		

Hikers ogle the valley from high up,
and a few of us turn the opposite 
           direction to gaze at what is left untamed.