Has been recovered, in a glass case
As the lace mantilla of one
Dona Ysidera Pico Forster.
It hangs as if the phantoms
That still pull on its threads
Are brand new, with her gloves and fan
Of abalone to circulate the sun.
Her brother owned the land,
What we now call Orange County,
So her hands had to fan as nature,
As the mermaid at times, named California
Though covered in the black lace of grief
The rich must convey, onus hominis albi,
So they won't be seen recognizing
The results of their rapacious play.
Her brother Pio Pico was pleased to unpack her
On the Englishman Forster
As he believed in providential deals, and so few
Like-minded men of substance here to duel.
He had, they said, "a penchant for gambling"
But he also had a private chapel
And a sacrificial rat in applique
On his gold lame chasuble.
There is his snuff-box and manga,
An early photograph of ugly him
And his miserable family
In haunted lace and threadbare bonnets,
The last Governor, resting anxious
On his laurels, premonition in hand
That he was not quite worthy
Of the lordship promised by the land.
His brother-in-law filched the blessed
Blood-stained mission from him at auction
And lived there with his sister
And the ghosts her fan waved off,
Still he trusted him, at blade point, to procure
Grazing grass for his hot-blooded brothers,
Insurgents on the lam, never knowing
He'd already struck a deal with the Americans
To sail poor Pio down the river
To Los Angeles with no title or estate,
Only his knowledge of the wilderness
And where the crossroads meet.
But Forster got his in the end as
They always do, at the sword of one
Don Bernando Yorba, who made his fortune
Trading sea otter pelts as complement to jewels,
And was forced, this Forster, to go to Germany
To petition for emigrants with free cows and parcels
He whose beef fed the California Gold Rush
From his great chain of ill-begotten rancheros.
What was his Dona to do but wave her fan
In her grief mittens and take tea
With the ghosts of the priests
Who took the native hearts and spirits away?
Their hacienda fell into disrepair
As they always do, the fencing
And trespassing broke them. But in truth
Families always take back what was not given.
The whole enchilada went to a guy named O'Brien
Who bought some later farm in a disputed transaction
And lost it in turn to an ever-more ruthless
Family machine called Irvine
Who now is barely a sleeve in a larger
Investment portfolio that includes the towers
Of the world's largest banks,
For they could be, and so were, taken as well.
It's always that way, and it's always these people
Who haunt the displays of whatever ideals
We're supposed to believe, who, yes, subscribed
With impeccable sincerity to Manifest Destiny
But have very little to show now to precious history
Except how predictable guys can be
When they draw swords for fun at the fair game
Of other people, in this case the Vaqueros,
Who speak with their eyes behind inferior glass
From daguerreotypes of their enslavement
To a system that defies the wide-open spaces
As they tend their tiny plots with humble serapes.
It's tempting to not look away,
To consider how every road I take today
Was once a river for a land-baron's bluff
To possess paradise because it was still secret
But moonlight-molten oils await me upstairs
As the immigrants came in plein air
To capture what had never before been seen
In their native-trained ways of craft
For they believed in artist brushes
To connect the world together,
Whether following the Navajo
Or wandering by chance onto Flores Peak,
Or sharing the iridescence of the seas
With traders as railroad steel rode in
And the rich men drained each other's oil
And the still lifes had oranges to die for
In clear California light, for display
In the most Aesthetic London galleries
By the McCloskeys, say, partners in illusion,
As if their palettes held a civilized record
Of chrysanthemums and roses, and strange scented
Blossoms that will wilt and die, to those
Who could never know what it's like
Out here, with no obstacles to enlightenment.
