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North County Santa Clara, Winter 2010 (Chosen for publication by Nils Petersen then Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County)
our back yard. The women wove skirts, adorned their ears
with shells... before apricot orchards, or Hewlett and Packard.
Before we, and all the others, arrived for the Space Age.
I open my door, stepping into a drift of pink — petals, like snow, blown from the huge plum tree in back. Next door, the nanny has parked her SUV, she lugs
tonight's dinner in cloth bags. Our French neighbors are green.
who moved back to Mumbai before giving me the name of the market that sells fenugreek and tamarind.
Gone - the mother-in-law who cooked in her saffron sari.
turn right onto the street where you can find everything. The Lanai flower shop, there only three weeks ago,
torn down. Not a board left. Not one nail.
A tide of traffic halts, obeys that arm: uplifted, black. Teenage boys saunter to the other side. You wonder
what force, what glue, holds up their pants.
watching, waiting for someone to stop, take them for a few hours to a job, that pays
enough for rent, tortillas, then some to send home.
reminding me of a dead poet. I buy flowers out of season, then retrace my way: Lockheed, Stanford, the VA.
filled with a kind of grace this deep in winter day.
So much has changed, yet this place is home.
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