California Heart

To everything there is a season,
but in some regions
seasons just flow together with little change...
Almost indistinguishable, fall and winter merge;
and spring can be as hot as an August night
with the Santa Ana’s blowing across the west.
Yes, I lived thru the spring of this love as a child,
believing in all its flowering promises;
despite all the evidence to the contrary.
I have known the heat of love’s summer like a women,
and I have been burned in its wake,
left with new wounds to become old scars
to add on like another trolley, on the streetcar of loss.
The winter was the worst and lasted the longest;
a winter of cold and ice
I breathed hoar frost by day and shivered alone by night...
Here in this land of December warmth
we nearly froze to death under its brilliant sun,
there on the great tundra of our isolation.
And the seasons came and the seasons went,
and a line of demarcation was drawn
while we wern’t paying attention
that would separate out past and our future
severing our bond, and forever changing the climate of our lives.
Yes, change it was a coming, and we were not watching.
So now the season has ended, but I’m finding it hard to let go....
For you see, I’m a west coast child from birth
with a warm California heart
and that heart doesn’t seem to know
when a season ends with coming wind and snow....
So I’m standing still in the heat and the rain,
just wondering which way to go....................
P. Kent 4/24/98