I didn’t like her when we first met.
loud, sprawling, changeable,
dry breath, wild hair,
perfume sweet
and acrid
rags one day, dior the next
whole weeks languishing in kmart acrylic
sunday mornings organic cotton
vegan shoes
her geography melodramatic, terrifying, biblical
her landscape exposed obscene
I ran to the arms of an old lover
grown attractive with my nostalgia and fear
but his breath was too moist and smelled of rot
his arms constricting
claustrophobic
so i came back to her.
Riding her river of streets and freeways i finally got it.
It is her…
this city, this place
these hills and deserts and valleys and expanses of concrete and asphalt.
There is no need of other, no other place, no other lover.
Her arms always open. She takes me in, takes me back,
lets me go and welcomes me home.
She feeds me when I’m hungry, finds me work when I am struggling, gives me shelter
when the rains come… and when I am riding high again she spreads out her unending
feast.
Craving silence, she wraps me in her dark green places.
Looking for adventure, she sparkles her lights and turns the music up loud.
I fly in and out of her skyways and marvel at her twinkling stars. I crest her hills and
gaze breathless into her jeweled depths.
She is decked in every color of precious gem, perfumed in all rare scents.
She is voluptuous beauty – hills rolling to beaches that kiss the ocean; valleys
surrounded by dark clefts of mountains.
She can be explored forever.
She takes all who come - pilgrims, paupers, pimps, seekers and salesmen, the lost and
the found.
She offers the dream, all dreams living in her prismatic eyes.
She is the gateway to the snow covered crags and the vast deserts.
She lies languid along the beaches where the waters reach out to foreign lands.
She speaks all languages. All colors fill her streets.
I write her songs and poems and paint her rarest hues.
Expanding… I expand into her, inhale her into me.
She’s the City of Angels - Babylon reborn by the western sea.
© 2015 Cindy Weinstein
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