from Atlas
the triumph of the idea
that breaks the water
something useful: do the houses
touch for cities building up
Mulholland and disintegration
in greater detail / in our collective memory
of Los Angeles who occupies
a central place
do the trees provide the shade
we need
do the garden shadow homes become
do the mockingbird / is singing
severe
like a stone in the sea as the story
takes a turn: disaster looms large
disaster be free
+++++
and is quiet at night.
The first to be discovered
Mandalay: within the anticline
the sand units pinch out
but you don’t)
can walk past them along the
beautiful empty beach is a short walk
the terrain save for berms
and dunes at shoreline
freezes occur
rarely (signs say you need
have a view of the ocean
because of the dunes
several littered items and evidence
of last night’s parties
(and less private) the talk
was on bats
and the sand so clean.
+++++
For light and by bark. After
native shade for the thorns for the
dappled road. Consider the soil
or any plant that suffers
from stress. With rays of lavender
and yellow centers. Disorder
to keep in mind. In bloom
growing white woodland
pictured on a soft-focus
background. Starved or side-
flowering. With staking a rich
backdrop to shorter plantings
in the dappled shade
by thick rhizomes. Like yarrow
and anise hyssop near
stems to the ground. Sets
of true leaves work the soil
down. New growth is the signal
to keep the rooting stem. Deepens
to bronze. To seed. To tufts
by the wind dispersed.
+++++
Sand-borne down foothills of wool those great days of sheep.
The hungry maw of that canyon clay of the ground. Artesian
wells in this village cascade of drought or true spirit.
A striking appearance from the sea. In the shape of good
words and wishes for the greater part of the year.
Plenty to brag of surprises by our city’s land through miles
of beach fronting. Who swelters in the dry atmosphere
of the West. Post littoral striking in a city on its fringe.
Barring an exceptional year of a cruel frost. Edge of edges
in diagonal evidence of the community’s proof of railways.
Reach for the pure air when survivors mute of some intimacy.
Newly wed and the nearly dead upon these parcels of change.
The shore fringed with a haze the only break in the vista.
+++++
aground) of fill and paved
thick with piers
in a contested space like the coast
otherwise be swept out
or surfacing beneath
the incoming
ice rapidly melting. The surest sign
to mirror the outline
of the island (there are
so many dead trees). To invest
in shorelines
that embrace the tides