She Would Be Half A Planet Away,

My Father Was An Engineer - He Wasn't Literary, Not A Writer Or A Journalist, But He Was One Of The World's Great Readers. Every Two Weeks, He'd Take Me To Our Local Branch Library And Pull Books Off The Shelf For Me, Stacking Them Up In My Arms - 'have You Read This? And This? And This?"

I Wondered Why It Had To Be So Poisonous. Oleanders Could Live Through Anything, They Could Stand Heat, Drought, Neglect, And Put Out Thousands Of Waxy Blooms. So What Did They Need Poison For? Couldn't They Just Be Bitter? They Weren't Like Rattlesnakes, They Didn't Even Eat What They Killed. The Way She Boiled It Down, Distilled It, Like Her Hatred. Maybe It Was A Poison In The Soil, Something About L.a., The Hatred, The Callousness, Something We Didn't Want To Think About, That The Plant Concentrated In Its Tissues. Maybe It Wasn't A Source Of Poison, But Just Another Victim.

No Matter Where I Was, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

I Could Hear The Icy Winds Of Sweden, But He Didn't Seem To Feel The Chill.

Poppies Bleed Petals Of Sheer Excess. You And I, This Sweet Battle Ground.