THE RESIDENTS
The arch of bougainvillea,
slowly, brimming with summer’s
luxuriance, turned into a wall,
barring the entrance to our home.
It happened overnight, she said,
eying nature’s handiwork,
its legerdemain.
There are other ways to egress,
ingress, though: backdoors,
side doors, the garage —
I once even wormed through
the French windows,
moonlight, chiaroscuro,
creeping into our spare bedroom,
to avoid the spiders
who’d made their homes
in sundry petals, mauvish and
swollen with California sun.
Defaulting numerous
times on payment to our gardeners,
we huddled together below,
alongside attendant tools —
pruning shears and saws, rakes,
dirt-clod gloves — as our gaze traveled
up the wall, like serpentine vines,
the moon and nature’s residents
cooly watching us from above.
OPHELIA, IMAGINED SOMEWHERE IN LOS ANGELES
You’ve had too much to drink — not to mention the blackmarket powder, the name of which changes like the tide: licit one day, illicit the next. Ophelia, you drowned in a kidney-shaped swimming pool, indifferent maids, undocumented and paid cash (under-the-table), just off the clock, sitting at a conspicuously placed bus stop in a tony neighborhood somewhere in the hills (you choose; it doesn’t matter). No one uses these public reliquaries, the bus stops, that is — the help, according to the rich, are only synecdochically relevant (e.g., lend me a hand, an ear, perambulate my children, teach them your tongue; hold yours, etc). I’ve never seen a rich person use the bus in these sinuous hills, especially in Los Angeles, a place where cars (new, semi-electric, electric, imagined, flying, classic, lowrider, jalopy, 80s, Yotas) are all better than schlepping the bus. I eye them as I drive through these hills towards San Pedro. And you, Ophelia: No self-coronated diadem of nettles or daisies. Too much water. Bougainvillea, whispering with sibilance, watched you (the maids, as I said, are waiting for their respective terminuses: Carson, San Pedro, Wilmington), heavy with drink, as you mermaided your way to the deep end, like lagan, for us to find you, again and again.
LINES COMPOSED ABOVE CABRILLO BEACH
A swath of birds
sits upon a becalmed sea,
a respite from the doldrums
of transpacific travel.
These creatures rest,
husbanding energy,
snorkeling for snacks,
mackerel, small fish.
A dolphin party appears
fashionably late
for the binoculared man
who, with morning coffee,
vacillates between newspaper
and sea-news.
Ocean headlines say:
Area Dolphins Frolic
While White Crane
Alights on Abalone Shell.
A lone surfer drifts out,
each wave a comma,
or whispered parentheses.
Perhaps nature will usurp man
and dolphins will reign supreme
and the white-craned question mark
of the bird’s neck will ask us:
What now?
What now, creatures?
GB