MAY MIRAGE

This poem was inspired by a tour my friend Zwi gave me through the La Brea Tar Pits Museum, and other things I experienced over the past month. It might need a better title...suggestions are welcome!

89 degrees in Echo Park and 68 in Venice, in one hour

On Mulholland, the smell of warm soil in the dark

cicadas buzzing in the parking lot

sparks on Electric Avenue

palm trees bending in a neon-purple breeze

Grizzlies walked on Abbot Kinney, a mural says

Camels, too, roamed the grass between La Brea and the beach

and horses, before they went extinct and then returned

aboard the Spanish ships

High tide is rolling in

hills are melting near Pacific Palisades

There was no sweet wine during the Pleistocene

but giant fern, and mammoths swam to Santa Rosa Island

floatings veiled in moist air, 26 miles across the sea

In his house in Rancho La Ballona

a friend shows me a map

the land grants yellow, pink and purple

Where was LA when they found skeletons in bubbling asphalt?

Mud and derricks and the same mountain silhouette

no oranges, no studios, no Spanish-style

not even Third Street, where garbage twirls along the curb

My purple month of May is almost over

Photos can’t do the jacarandas justice

in real-life and from afar they seem like brimful clouds

close-up they are gauzy, flimsy petals sprinkling

the sidewalks like every year, like last year

when I crossed the boulevard through light blue and green

in a new skirt, holding a bouquet

white and purple flowers

the sunlight golden, as 11000 years ago