Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin

  Owl
  calls,
  pollen dust blows
     Swirl of light strokes writhing
  knot-tying light paths,
 
  calligraphy of cars.
 
Los Angeles basin and hill slopes
Checkered with streetways. Floral loops
Of the freeway express and exchange.
 
  Dragons of light in the dark
  sweep going both ways
  in the night city belly.
  The passage of light end to end and rebound,
  —ride drivers all heading somewhere—
  etch in their traces to night’s eye-mind
 
  calligraphy of cars.
 
Vole paths. Mouse trails worn in
On meadow grass;
Winding pocket-gopher tunnels,
Marmot lookout rocks.
Houses with green watered gardens
Slip under the ghost of the dry chaparral,
 
  Ghost
  shrine to the L. A. River
  The jinja that never was there
  is there.
  Where the river debouches
  the place of the moment
  of trembling and gathering and giving
  so that lizards clap hands there
  —just lizards
  come pray, saying
   “please give us health and long life.”
 
  A hawk,
  a mouse.
 
Slash of calligraphy of freeways of cars.
 
  Into the pools of the channelized river
  the Goddess in tall rain dress
  tosses a handful of meal.
 
  Gold bellies roil
  mouth-bubbles, frenzy of feeding,
  the common ones, the bright-colored rare ones
  show up, they tangle and tumble,
  godlings ride by in Rolls Royce
  wide-eyed in brokers’ halls
  lifted in hotels
  being presented to, platters
  of tidbit and wine,
  snatch of fame,
 
   churn and roil,
 
  meal gone  the water subsides.
 
  A mouse,
  a hawk.
 
The calligraphy of lights on the night
  freeways of Los Angeles
 
   will long be remembered.
 
  Owl
  calls;
  late-rising moon.