Los Angeles Basin

***

Santa Anas rolled like a hell wheel

down the mountains and blew the smog

and impurities to the Pacific horizon.

Sunset is toxic copper, a tainted metallic.

Strange how the poisoned air is

luminous when the sun drops behind it.

***

Today the wind and light drug me.

Everything I see has equal weight.

Palm fronds, tangled scarlet bougainvillea,

a shabby adobe cottage, a red tile roof,

criss-crossing power lines. I look at

the sky and remember I heard a man say

that California is heartbreaking.

It tries to be Paradise, but it’s broken.

***

The small-shouldered oil derricks

pump slowly as I drive past a concrete

gorge built to contain a trickle of water

known as the Los Angeles River, courtesy

of the Flood Control District. A long white

egret poses like a paper cutout against

the flat mud and gray walls of the river.

***

The whipping winds of the Santa Anas die down

and a countervailing wind picks up speed, moving,

whistling, past car windows, past the 405 and 15,

and houses in Downey and Hawaiian Gardens,

Norco and Riverside, and on out to the desert

to finally be caught and churned in

Coachella Valley windmills spinning

like toys on the sands of the Mojave.

***