Crazy cat, have I now become your namesake? I almost went
a little poco myself last week chasing you from grape vines
when I spotted your raccoon-striped tail. Almost upon you,

I saw you move and you had transformed into a raccoon.
You were large as a German shepherd. I must have looked
like the Looney Tunes coyote skidding to a stop in open space,

just past a cliff edge, hovering wide-eyed in full knowledge
gravity would kick in and it was going to hurt. If I were
watching on television, the coyote would drop right then,

and I’d be laughing. But there was no television. I spotted you
watching me from beneath a bush behind me, maybe thinking
even for a human I was more than a little nuts to charge

that horse of a raccoon, not thinking it might charge back—
and you were right. This was a Looney Tunes cartoon moment
the director would’ve let roll when I’d hope he’d cut the script

I put away the water rifle I used to chase you from the yard,
had my come-to-Jesus moment as if Jesus Himself sat down,
looked me in the eye and said I was an idiot. You were trying

to tell me something from under that bush. Just to make sure
I got the point, the raccoon eyed me through my screen door
once I had gone inside, as he climbed my fig tree. It stayed

clearing branches over an hour like a shopper after Christmas,
looking for all the bargains it could take. The tree swayed
back and forth, doing the hula from the clambering weight—

another cartoon image in what was anything but a cartoon.
I send up a white flag, cat, surrender to your small craziness.
Small is for mice, of which you do your fair share of hunting.

Small is, in point of fact, smart, Large is for those animals
who are partial to grapes and figs, and who know full well
what I look like. I hear that Looney Tunes coyote, skidding.
                        

	Today, Surfridge is a Los Angeles curiosity—a modern ghost town 
	inhabited by a rare butterfly. 
	—Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times

Because my dad had always wanted a beach house. Because,
whether feeding horses and cleaning stalls as a stable boy,
or writing computer code to keep a roof over our heads,
he needed a view of waves and sand through a window,
even if that window was in his mind. Because he’d worked
since he was eight years old, had nothing to look forward to.
Because, with four brothers and a sister, a wife and two boys,
he needed an ocean to remind him there was more to life
than himself alone on a beach—feet sinking into quicksand.

So I almost lived in Surfridge, Santa Monica Bay’s navy blue
shining California Dream and early 1960s real-estate boom.
So my dad could have his view in front of him and his love
for it to expand inside me as I inched taller. So, even though
I was afraid and unsure what to say in front of him, he and I
could share and have one desire in common. So we could
be quiet together. Even with howling jets from LAX over us
every six minutes, because the jets were passing through,
and the ocean, hill and our house would always be with us.

Where my folks found a place for sale. Where LAX claimed
eminent domain, bulldozed 600 houses to stretch runways
straight to sea, and the Environmental Protection Agency
stopped LAX from laying said runways. Where soundless,
streets lay sunning, snakes without a care and butterflies
floated back in numbers after stinging LAX harder than bees,
while buckwheat, sage brush, goldenbush, primrose and poppy
displaced lawns. Where I still park near the perimeter fence
engrossed with the sunset. Where I’m my dad’s son, after all.