Living there at all

Redondo Beach, California
c.1960

Consensus was anyone stupid enough

To build on the beach cliffs in Malibu deserved what they got.

I learned to shake my head at the footage,

Stare when we drove up PCH to gawk the next day,

Remember when the TV peacock first turned color

How the cliff houses melted

On wet orange mud, like sherbet toppings

Sliding off the cone. They never

Slid at once – the cliff held its shape,

Soaking in storm, held to the last,

Then exhaled, like a shift worker at quitting time.

All the ways a house came down

Showed in color now, sometimes whole

But usually in parts, sometimes neatly cracked

Like eggs, wealthy white sofas, carpets, curtains

Spilling down the orange mud, half still clinging

Gaping open for helicopters over the Pacific

To film the broken shells of California wealth and fame.

“They can afford it,” my working parents told each other.

“Shouldn’t have built there to begin with.”

I learned to nod my head, gravely.
I learned to have no pity.

Until the morning our suburb went to sea,

The San Andreas taking a deep breath,

Brushing loose the crumbs of buildings, human efforts,

Buckling the famous freeways, flipping cars.

My bed, on wheels, rolled from wall to wall,
Loose cargo stopped against the door.

I liked that, trapped alone at sunrise,

Not surprised.

The peacock showed in color now—
Mudslides, earthquakes,

Forest fires at Big Sur.

Maybe that night a kid in Seward

Watched the news of the California quake.

Maybe some good sense farming parents shook their heads.

“Shouldn’t have built there to begin with,”

Maybe they told each other.

“That’s why they call it a fault line,”

With a sense that yes, it’s our own dumb fault,

Living there at all.

In Nevada, the joke is beachfront property,
When Southern California's done
Sliding to the sea.

Too bad my parents didn’t live

Where people had more sense.

I might have known better, then.

                                                             April, 2012

                                                             in the month of fools

Los Angeles Earthquake, 1971

Blowing the Dunes

Las Vegas, 1993

Our new tycoon

Blew the Dunes to dust

Flaunting the end of Era

With fake cannons and mockery of flames,

Pyrotechnics fitting coronation of a pirate king

That set the demolition crew on edge—

Colored bombs bursting in air

Raining cinders on rocket fuel and dynamite

Mathematically placed, waiting

For the real work of rubble,

Public fears of asbestos dust allayed,

Security stopping scavengers,

Memory hunters trying one last raid—

Faces on the street see dead windows

Breathing sulphur smoke thickening

Over honeymoon couples and their cheap rings,

Names exchanged in the night,

Skin upon skin in a city where flesh is uncomplicated,

Where all that happens there will stay

Until the rooms themselves explode

And what happened there is released

In exhalation of breath long held,

What leaves the body in the end

Blinking at the lights, the lift of desert air,

The tang of mesquite and sage.
 

All the fanfare humanly possible didn’t mask

The waiting truth of Execution

Publically displayed: 200,000 faces on the street

And I was one, looking at the dead windows

Where I danced, silk of the songs

An illusion of elegance, anything you wished you could be.

I think of Ozymandias, the colossal wreck,

I think of Death Valley and the rare chance of visiting

At the moment when its futile flowers bloom.

 

                                                                                  8/2012

 

Wharf Cats

Black mussels crust the wet columns

Pushing down through surface sand
To something solid, deep
Where pile drivers hit
Repeated concussions that scattered fish
While the Pacific took its hits,
Until a wooden platform
Extended its stage over the washing sea
Where my grandparents ran concessions,
Carnival nomads selling their trailer,
Calling this home for the raising of kids.

Fisherman’s Wharf was my first backyard
Where I tamed the cats that never walked on land,
Nor would I have set foot there
No need, with all the levels of life
Under bare feet, barnacled columns,
Wooden stage and rooftops of the shops
Burning my feet until a layer of tar
Took the function of shoes,
No scrubbing past the black calluses,
Personal barnacles branding me wharf child
Who never would have walked on land.
I tasted family pride in burger stands,
Rolled candied apples over nuts,
Stirred caramel corn to stiffness.
Grandfather’s eyes a blue smiling sea.

If we could have stayed suspended over columns
Anchored under blue,
If the raging decade and its war
Hadn’t mixed its smell with the fresh caught fish,
Glazed eyes of the shocked and damned
Haunting the stage at night,
No cleaning station with a hose
To rinse the unused parts
Falling where the wharf cats waited
Licking themselves clean when the fishing was done—

I was eating tuna when the phone call came,
Forcing first steps on dry land.
Years drive the columns deep.
Fifty years of piling hard
Below the surface sand,
Musseled anchors in the tossing sea,
You learn to leap from mark to mark,
Columns below and roofs above—
The burning of tar indelibly inked

Layers beyond the washing of feet.

                                                                                      June 19, 2012

 



Redondo Beach Pier, California
c.1960

What Plums Know

 
The best plums of hot June

Were well above my picking reach,

Small this year but wet with warm

Red meat precariously contained by purpling skin,

Bursting at the thought of teeth

Or on them – such fullness in a fruit,

And eager, I couldn’t help but fill myself

With eager plums off the tree

Wondering on Father’s Day,

The first since inquiry proved

Absence of eagerness, despair of meat,

If more plums would have helped—

Even one to burst its summer

On your winter life,

Leaving the daughter to shoulder your load,

To fill the absence like your mother’s before

And how many parents leaving

Children to prove worth of life?
Even the summer plums know

To store their warmth, waiting for

The tug of time and gravity forcing

Elegiac falls and then the glorious burst—

On Father's Day, I shook the tree,

Putting my whole weight to the task,

Red meat of wet plums running warm and sweet

Down my face, barrage after barrage,

Until the tree could yield no more.
 

                                                                          June 17, 2012

                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                        

 

Le Martel

 

Clatter from the kitchen would wake me,

Metal pots at 4:00 am she tried to hush,

Water in a cleaning bucket,

Odor of bleach.

The kitchen light elongated

Down the dark hall

Drew a line below my door—

The line louder than the pots

That might have fallen

Into disorder, possibly dusty,

The unused ones in back.

I didn’t burden her with inquiry

Or knowledge that her restlessness had woken me again—

Grandmother what are you doing?

Why aren’t you in bed?

Every cabinet emptied, utensils piled,

Held accountable

The daily, the obscure, justifying use.

A roll of clean shelf paper,

Flowers for the spring.

She wrote dates on bags of food scraps

Frozen in wait for garbage day.

The sounds would abate by sunrise,

Cleaning water recede.

I’d wake to a spot of toothpaste on my brush,

A grapefruit quartered, with a cherry,

Daily Bread and Reader’s Digest, large print,

As if casually arranged.

As if it all came easily,
Like her chocolate cake

I learned to make

From scratch.

July, 2012

 

Arbitrary Lines

Torrance, California c.1960

Printed ink flickers

Against the fact of water

Falling as itself, regardless.

And I felt better watching it fall

Without telling myself that it did,

Down the green gullies

Of the Flores’ fiberglass roof

That shed a green glow

Upon bright ceramic figures

Crowding the patio shelves.

I knew the brightness of green

Surpassed the ink of the name

I’d learned to read: “green”.

Mr. Flores sang with the Spanish songs,

Full voice lifting through the rain.

I liked not knowing the words

That taught me the sound of a happy man.

I wished I could be the neighbor girl

Who helped with the shelves,

Polishing the figures,

Seeing his face as he sang.

I watched from my window next door,

The streaming of water

From the green roof

Where I wasn’t allowed

Since his words didn’t match ours:

Verde. Green.

With a cinderblock fence to remind me

Of the arbitrary lines between.

                                                                      June, 2012

 

 

All That Was Given

. . . assumptions of place immobilize

there is no place,

just resting points

where you catch your breath

between

      Saturdays I sleep

      but something called me early.

      The dropping on leaves was gentle.

      I stood where the rain could drop on me too,

      rain to rinse the dust.

      this is a good place

      for trees and the singing of morning

regardless of language acquisition

this is why foreign travel

is to be discouraged

if you plan to return

your language

leaves you

out of place
 

      A cardinal built outside my window

      with no understanding of windows,

      that it was watched

      the hatching of offspring

      watched.

      I tried to look gently,

      Wishing not to disturb

I must have built outside a window

not understanding how carefully

I was watched

I can't see the eyes looking back

I wish to gesture something rude

but don't because of what it is . . .
 

      She didn't linger

      She'll build again in the spring.

"...something we will potentially have to live with,

throughout the whole thing,"

says the atheist

in truth

      Peace is easy in the clouds

      Remembering other places clouds have been

      It is, after all, the same sky

      And the colors in the morning

(ingratitude is heavy

Like a sin

I fail to love

All that was given

in the rain)

      We slip into easy clothing

      Time never wears the same day twice
      It was the best yard for children.

Trying not to count the time remaining

Seeking permission from . . .

Asking the universe maybe,

God

Hoping I'll know

How to leave a place

and when 

 

     I keep the grass mowed

     Holding in trust for the next layer

     Of running and laughing

     Needing the best yard

     too large for me

     If time were something different . . .

     If we could hear them all at once . . .

Forced in honesty to tell the child

The near adult

It's safer not to speak,

If she could only wait--

She'll be safer elsewhere,

Considering

The definitions that cling

to the innocent trees

of this place

      Peace is easy in the clouds,

      And the colors in the morning,

      Especially on days I generally sleep . . .

Where we are

not

supposed to be.

July, 2012

Diversion Dam

Redding, California, c.1970   

The irrigation ditch drew boundary lines:

Our side an ill-kept orchard

That still gave fruit in random years

When the trees were in the mood--

Reading trees by the texture of bark print

On bare legs when the weather turned warm.

The other side an earthworm farm,

Boxes of dirt on the surface

But at night up close you heard them squirm.

Morning was for chores, like chopping out the trench

Bringing water to the dry garden

Planted with good intent:

This year we would weed—

We would have a harvest—

We would tend—

I engineered the water flow,

White string tied to sticks like a model ski lift

Minus all the snow—

I marked then chopped the dry run

With pickaxe, shovel, hoe.

We waited to tap the valves

While the county crew sank panels

To restore the diversion dam

Routing water from the Sacramento

Swelled with snowmelt in the spring
 

Into canals that in those days

Still told city planners

Redding was a rodeo town,

And mornings were for chores

Where we grew hay that fed the horses

That carried the teenagers

Racing horses on the hard packed dirt

Of the canal banks, dry in winter

But in summer gave a wet place to land

When your horse took the bit and ran.
 

The canal banks cut paths

Through people’s yards, there before the yards,

Crossing neighborhoods sprung where new kids

Weren’t allowed to play since they might fall in

Open water that later went to pipes underground

So as not to impede new houses

Where I used to know the names of horses

Who lived there first.

We caught the new kids looking
Hazed in dust the hooves raised.
 

I rode American flag, my finest year

On a flame red sorrel half Arabian mare

Setting pace, twenty-five mounts pounding behind,

Reared to plant the pick, Under the Double Eagle

Blaring from the PA, hooves in time

With teenagers on top not caring how fast we rode—

Our horses knew how not to crash.

If you fell, and it hurt, you got back on.

It was the only rule: you got back on.
 

It took a hammer, every year, to knock the valve.

You heard metal on rusted metal,

Then the wait—

For the white plume, pressed from the canals

Fed by the diversion dam

Restored every spring,

When the Sacramento swelled with snow

Off Mount Shasta,

And the melting Cascades.
 

                                                                                                  April 15, 2012

                                                                                  in memory of Jack Best,

        drillmaster