California Landing
look into written lines from
journals of long dead explorers
who whipped their men up this
coast, into the harbor
two centuries later yankees will
grab their commercial empire and
give birth to our continent destiny
stretching from coast to coast
now they hold it against homeless
letting loose quarters on streets
squinting at shopping malls in a
rebuilt downtown fantasy, films, shoes,
books, gowns, gold, jewels, videos, toys
and baubles sparkling in the sunlight
after morning clouds burn away
or gray, refusing to part with envy
and not one dime, not one nickel to
beggars, unshaven bags, shopping carts
digging through the garbage, bottles, food
from the trash cans set into three ton
concrete shells so that no one can steal
them off the streets.
This next day we proceed two leagues
further into the safe, enclosed port,
and anchor at a point where the savage
fires burn closer to the shore. There,
by gestures and movements of fighting
and marching and casting of spears, the
natives make it known to us that other
white men, armed like ourselves with swords
and lances, passed through the interior desert
several years ago, beyond the mountains
that we see on the eastern horizon....
I walked around a lot at lunch, downtown, when I worked at City Hall in the early 1990s. There were different kinds of people there, and there were different kinds of people there long before then too.
Dancharthos // Poems // San Diego