I am so sick of this smog,
(And the plane has only just landed).
Gray and gold, it smothers the city;
I already miss cotton-ball clouds
In a sky that is blue, just blue,
Floating.across flat green fields filled
With yellow-topped corn and spindly windmills.
The flatness is immense here,
But clotted with a wreck of suburbia,
Boxy ranches and sudden apartment buildings.
Instead of a harvest, the backyards are filled
With cement and fetal-curved swimming pools.
Every bit of it looks about to crack
Under all this weight.

The palm trees that used to look exotic
And spark my mind with other people’s sold memories
Of India, Siam, and Hollywood,
Are now tacky, too tall,
Hovering over the highway wall.
They look like a locust infestation.
Even the white windmills
Seemed more benign, their blades
Whipping around and around
As if they were ready for a fight.

Ten months is too long for LA,
But it would probably be too long for heaven, as well.
So when I settle for good,
It will be in a house
With a winter view of the river,
A highway drive from the city.
This valley, though sometimes empty, is filled
With both silence and cement,
Sunshine and snow and thunderstorms,
And the only house that matters,
With a winter view of the river.

I’ve noticed
In the lives of poets,
Through their works,
They change.

At first, the poems are gentle, pastoral,
Sentences made exceptional,
Correct alliteration and rhythm and form,
A house of cards.

Yet as the poems collect,
As the young poet becomes an older poet,
Not meticulous but skilled,
Poems become harsh and wild,
Syllable stacked upon syllable,
No longer sentences but strong strings of words,
A chain of names.

I can almost see the soft skin of youth
Wrinkle and spot.
I can almost hear the soft laughter of a childish heart
Harden into a cackle.
I can almost feel the hopes become
Dashed hopes, broken realities collecting on the floor like
A vase of flowers.

I am still young.
I still write love poems,
And poems about grass.
Reading the lives of poets,
I watch the poetry change.

Oh, God. Will I, too, change?

I never think of you.
Your face never crosses my mind.
Your dark eyes
Are quite forgotten,
And I cannot remember that they are
The shade of a puddle
Waiting for rainboots.

I never think of you,
And I do not care.
It does not bother me
That I cannot hear your laughter
Behind me,
Or the whispers for my ear.
I do not even recall your absence
Until I look around me for an answer
And realize that you are not there.

I never think of you,
And there is no love lost.
You were never even a dandelion seed for me,
Not ever even a wisp of a wish
To pin everything on,
And now that you are gone,
My dreams have not floated away
With you.
On the wind,
Off to some new ground.

I never think of you,
And your name does not escape my lips
Softly when I am not dreaming of you,
When no one is listening,
Not even I.

I never think of you,
My love,
And there will be no poetry
Written for you,
Nor the smallest word spoken for
The love of you
Or the loss of you,
For no love was lost.