Writing her aloneness, before she turned
Alone to stone on me, while Zora continued on,
Seeing but shielding her own.
There are journals. They exist.
Just harder to find, ensconced in drawers,
The secrets that everybody knows
But not how to say.
There's a Parakeet Gate on Waxwing Circle,
A Wet Lab Life Science spot. The ground dries up,
Stones like little candies, straw wandering,
Tails waving in sync with the leaves.
All the streams are now crystal, dissolved
Like the Ascension Church's way of the waters,
Grape vines yellowed, Jackson Ranch
Line Dancing Space for Lease.
Different choices, different result.
I think of the flat plains with my trailering shot
And little gestures that show the bloom is
Recovering, but it's too soon to tell
Hubris must be swallowed first, yet again.
The cottonwood, translucent in its dance
Brings the thirst, as their sun mirror
Snakes along the cool valleys to Lake Viejo.
Even in these Space Goose houses
Inclined high in ashen flax they look beyond
Where they came from, ancient temple or old church,
With the PTSD of ruined pioneers
Like the Light Rail at Patriot
Never built but it could be here
For the enthusiasts of hummingbird moths
And fire authority helicopters.
But no matter where they are now,
Shopping at the marketplace with the waterfall,
Golfing or gazing on the irrigation, they'll be here
Come Sunday feeling upside down, stumbling
Between program bands, green lights risen
Over the Tustin aircraft yard, the Free Chapel
With a giant Betsy at its entrance. You know what they say:
Cleanliness is next to Commerce West.
Masonic compass on that strawberry Tesla,
B.W. Boyd shears, Experian happy to be here,
The privacy invasion people, its only the tomatoes
The nursery throws away that can be nurtured,
The tagged flats are just algorithms, measures
Of contentment, but they have no such worries here.
The smiles creep into everyday conversation
And though there is nothing to laugh at, we all do.
