Harvesting The Storm

 
I was brought to this place
as a rain storm, in an exodus,  
in a grand hope of a people
 
the color of another storm
that used to destroy
to make room for new life.
 
I was born in a land by the  
ocean, surrounded by palms;  
trees not native to the land.  
 
Of bean fields and eucalyptus  
& pepper trees, and makeshift  
 
film studios in barns, paying  
the extras in coin realm, before  
the First World War and talkies.  
 
And migrant workers in pickup
trucks, with their straw hats  
& bandannas, heading out  
 
to the orchards & vineyards  
at daybreak, like twilight,  
and the valleys still murky
 
with a low lying haze from  
smudge pots to ward off the  
chill that set in each evening.  
 
‘Til morning when even then  
you could see one’s breath  
in the air that settles deep  
 
in the lungs along with a  
faint sick of wildfire that  
had laid bare the hillsides,
 
blocking onshore breezes  
from the ocean. But still,      
while bareback on horses,  
 
one could taste the stench of  
carnage months following  
its aftermath. And yet,  
 
it all took me back to the  
scent of the sea along with  
the lone cry of seagulls, and  
 
the reek of oil derricks  
on the way from San Pedro,  
 
and my fondness for the  
cuisine of the pampas.  
 
The lineage of an adopted  
land’s culture that runs  
through me, breath & soul  
 
long after there’s nothing left  
of it. Except people like me 
who remember the blood  
 
from their ancestry that  
never wilts, it never flinches,  
it won’t let it be forgotten.  
 
If you forget it will simply  
haunt you, but I don’t forget.  
I remember it all, because  
 
it’s so much a part of the  
generations that brought me  
to this place of my birth.  
 
From the Missions & Pueblos.  
While the sagebrush explodes  
from the conflagration  
 
that spills from the mouth        
of the Malibu hills      
and down to the coastline.  
 
Dark ash swirls in an updraft  
before descending on the few  
natives who straddle the surf  
as they cast their nets in vain.  
 
And piers smolder, then burn;  
the bones slowly collapsing  
into the whitecap breakers.  
 
Everything tinged orange from  
the sun’s agony in the smoke
and from the storms.