Rectangles and Howls
The plan for a hike in Sycamore
Canyon
became a picnic on a bench at La
Brea Tar Pits
Urban bucolic, I’m thinking
as we share a submarine sandwich
while a crane lifts a mastodon
from a river of primordial ooze
running deep under Wilshire Blvd.
where saber-toothed felines
are caught in claw and snarl
under the subterranean parking lots
of insurance companies.
The black cauldron bubbles
of prehistory in our nostrils
and my old brain almost remembers
the happy accidents it took to
survive.
How it has all come to this:
A paved swamp with rectangles
gone wild
on a street of museums, hung dreams
and howls.
__________________________________
Out of Suburbia
I have come from abandoned
streets
and serious lawns, from rooms of
deep pile
thinking perpendiculars.
In the mall, a collusion of
displays,
among the well-fed hungry.
The palm tree brought to live
under skylight
hasn’t enough arms for me.
The orange grove is paved over
by on-ramps and off-ramps.
I return to search the manicured wreckage
for the man who sleeps in my body.
Listen, a sound beats beneath cut
roots.
Nests grow in the metal tree on
each roof
and a controversy of birds stirs
the air.
