UNION STATION
I
The train came from a northern state
With an Indian name where the sun
Was a cold silver dollar
High up in a metal grey sky
The little boy stepped out of the station
And the yellow southern sun hit him
Like a large lonely family pet
Bounding across a bright blue sky
To knock him down and cover him
With wet warm kisses
Never knowing such a thing could be
Though he had never been to this city
Filled with freeways and art deco bridges
The little boy knew he was home

II
The boy his father his brother and his friend
Were on their way to Dodger Stadium
In an old lime green and white 1955 Chevy
The father knew the car would have to cool
So halfway they stopped at Olivera Street
They parked the old car at the train station
The brother wanted jumping beans the friend
Wanted a taco the father wanted
A beer the boy wanted to see the station
The old train station was the largest room
He had ever seen larger than a church
Filled with light and air and a silence of
Expectation everyone got what
They wanted and the Dodgers won the game

III
It was winter and even in Los Angeles
The sky was swirling with clouds
But they were silver clouds bright
Growing brighter until golden
As they spun beneath the sun
The young man’s mood was just as dark
As he pulled into park at the station
He had just left his brother at L. A. jail
Where he found him scared and doing time
Three weeks for a minorly wicked infraction
He talked to his brother tried to calm him
But this made his own nerves weak
So after he looked back then walked
He went to the nearby station to drink

And to think

IV
Leaving the station in the rain
The young man crossed over
Artful grey concrete bridges
With large white globes hovering
At the ends of fountains of metal
He and his brother had watched
Giant ants crawling under these
Bridges ready to conquer L. A.
As they had laid summer nights
In the grey glow of the t.v.
He could still see the scared
Brave look of his brother as
They parted as he looked down
To see the concrete river flow

V
The young man sat with a long neck beer
In a finely carved wooden bench
And looked beside him at the young woman
Who stared upward at the pigeons gliding
Way up in the cathedral ceiling
By pictures of veterans returning
Home to their loved ones home to a place
Made different by their journey’s end
The young man thought of how he arrived here
As a boy holding his mother’s hand
And how much things had changed since then
Slowly the young woman turned her head
Let’s go across the street she smiled
We can get a taco

And they did

ALL THE CAT IN THE GARDEN
All the cat in the garden,
who rubs up against you,
is saying is cherish me.
All the green, little vines,
that hang in the kitchen,
are saying is cherish me.
Even the bright sun,
who rolls through the sky,
is saying cherish me.

VOICE OF A WOMAN
The wine is never blue and there are no
poems to bathe in, no tumbling sentences
where sex makes the sidewalks worthwhile or
sweeter than the flesh of her hard nipples.
The lips of a woman, her rough music,
only words, but words like the vibrations
of guitar strings, the moans of lovers young.
Lazy voice, voice of wood, voice like a hand
holding my heart like a wild winged bird
until I am an ear, a ripe orchid
open, open to your soft buzzing voice,
you make me a leaf dancing on the wind.
You make me a fish trapped to swim, to breathe
in the restless, huge sea of your rolling voice.