A red-tail hawk lifts off
with a red mouth of meat
above the tarnished green
dome of the Old Observatory,
mothballed after light pollution
washed out its view into
a cosmos whose creatures
eat not meat but protein.
***
I lived eight years in my thirties in Berkeley and environs, a poetically productive period of my life. I was working as a wine merchant and had given up on academic expectations, those that I had myself but also those others had of me. The main bonds upon me were those of epicurean oenophile commerce. Poetry therefore came more easily.
Now I have lived almost another ten productive years in Southern California, my personal moment of waning twilight on hills where chaparral used to reign.
Despite this, few of my poems bear any trace of the Californian landscape. Here is one, which speaks to the systematic human invasion of these dry uplands, overcast many mornings of the year with the low clouds of the Catalina eddy marine layer.
Rare, the shrill coyote bark’s become
as our presence intrudes on theirs.
Nights we suffer from our own noise,
left in peace with the howl of our cares.
(Wail)
***
Here are a few others:
Thoroughfares
Orthodox Cemetery at Fort Ross
The Horticulturist
Chaparral Sunset
Giraffes at San Gorgonio
Not to mention my recent verse in Mandarin. first line of a poem which I hope to finish before I pass.
白鹭在 路边
bái lù zài lù biān
An egret lit on the roadside.
***
A night view of the eponymous Old Observatory. It has been replaced with University housing.
