San Diego
by Heather Dubrow
Italian cypresses insistently mark the graves
of half-remembered great-aunts
whose morals were as implacable
as their pasta sauces.
And Van Gogh cypresses are the lightning
intoned by Jove the Avenger.
But these California cypresses are wind chimes
rustled by some boyish god.
If all those sepia New England theologians
had visited San Diego,
they would have caught the error in translation:
surely Eve offered Adam a kumquat,
and even God couldn’t resist a bite.
The would-be predators in this zoo
nibble on Purina’s Bird of Prey pellets,
and love their tasty neighbors
as themselves.
(Vulture chow? Only in California.)
One can almost forget the carnivores’ cousins,
the slick species drunk on high octane,
revved up to inherit this earth,
as they hiss through the flowered margins
of these rosy visions.
Copyright © 2010 by Heather Dubrow.
|