A cacophony of construction.
The creation of new bluffs
and canyons along the coast.
Hotels, temples, houses,
emerald pools
with fountains.
Byzantine, Italianate, Spanish,
architectural collage.
An avery of terraces.
I perch stories high
watching feathers
collapse to nothing on the shore.
Hear the constant cadence
of the sea.
And I will die here,
looking for the sails
that abandoned me.
Their slow methodical voyage
of months under the ocean’s sky
looking for Cathay
with its mysterious treasure
of silks and spices.
Songs being sung about Iberia,
hunger, defeat.
I keep looking for my humanity,
dwarfed in the future,
the planetary gardens of a new world.
And gaze at the albatrosses,
terns,
gulls with their broad graceful wings,
gliding with the wind
and look for the ancient ships
that sail in me and my people.
Our stranded tribe
on the other side of their home’s horizon.
And with a catch in my heart
wait for their sails to appear.