Peninsula, Long Beach

On this beach the days are mild, evenings cool.
Wind kicks up at three, unvaried as bread
sliced from a single loaf.  I read
the seasons by the setting sun:  summer’s spool
hidden by high rise, and then, the slow pull
toward Catalina. By fall, the sun beds
down in open ocean, un-obscured
except by cruise and cargo ships schooled
before the port. Neighbors say Upton Sinclair
left Pasadena to summer on this beach.
I wonder how he conjured slaughter
houses—the severed flesh, the stench—in air
so sweet?  Did suffering stay within his reach
while dolphins leapt and sun melted to water?

From The Green Season



Traveler

​
You come at night to say you’re leaving,
have dreamed of freedom for so long.
And more, you love another—old familiar song.
I call for Mother in my grieving,
but in her own dream, she’s not speaking.
The children, uninvolved, won’t say you’re wrong.
Our friends are not surprised, say don’t prolong
the misery, the pain, by not accepting
that you’re gone. Because I refuse to hear
the first time you say you really have to go,
you speak again, louder than before, and wear
a new love on your arm, gesture meant to show
you have no love for me—I must forbear.
The dead are even colder than we know.

From Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems