One West Coast // 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.