If there was 1 word to characterize the spirit of the moment, it was Confidence

                                                              —David McCullough

What I love about California

is what the world loves about California

& tho they say there is no season

I know better.

The hospital where I was born

contains islands

in the windows & when I fed the dying

there I fed them

with my hands. When my mother

lay there with her cracked face

I bought plain mashed potatoes

& when she wouldn’t eat them

I ate them with 1 plastic spoon.

The house where my mother lives may contain

seasons that only she sees but I want

something decent

to enter her today, something

we can all love. Fire won’t feed the Santa Ana

but I do. Something somewhere

is burning California

but I do. I never saw what hit me

my mother keeps repeating

I never saw it coming