One West Coast
By Al Young
for Gordon Lapides
Green is the color of everything
that isn’t brown, the tones ranging
like mountains, the colors changing.
You look up toward the hills & fog—
the familiarity of it after so many years
a resident tourist.
A young man walks
toward you in vague streetcrossing denims
& pronounced boots. From the pallor of
his gait, the orange splotch twin gobs of sunset
in his shades, from the way he vibrates
his surrounding air, you can tell, you can tell
he’s friendly, circulating,
he’s a Californian: comes to visit,
stays for years, marries, moves a wife in,
kids, wears out TV sets, get stranded on
loneliness,
afternoon pharmaceutica,
so that the sky’s got moon in it by
3 o’clock, is blooo, is blown—
The girls: theyre all
winners reared by grandmothers & CBS.
Luckier ones get in a few dances with
mom, a few hours, before dad goes back
in the slam, before “G’bye I’m off
to be a singer!” & another runaway
Miss American future drifts
over the mountain &
into the clouds.
Still
there’s a beautifulness about California.
It’s based on the way each eyeblink toward
the palms & into the orange grove leads backstage
into the onionfields.
Unreachable, winter happens inside you.
Your unshaded eyes dilate at the spectacle.
You take trips to contain the mystery.
Copyright Credit: Al Young, “One West Coast” from The Blues Don’t Change. Copyright © 1982 by Al Young. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.
Source: The Blues Don’t Change (Louisiana State University Press, 1982)