Love I believe in you, even if you still aren't here,
and it seems unlikely you'll think to look for me
in Costa Mesa under the freeway
behind Baja Fresh.


But I can't go to St. Petersburg for you now,
or Cape Christie or New York City or Deadwood.
I think my fate is here, with the plants
that're supposed to make it seem like paradise.


I talked with a marble stand
of pink and purple pansies
at the southern valet gate to Fashion Island today.


One said that after the shock of the first season,
they and the millions of others like them
grow embarrassed.


That these feelings keep humans from relaxing
on corporate park lawns.


Another said they know how much water
they steal, and just where that puts them.
That they're embarrassed to face the natural world,
when it is,
and that, partly because of them,
there's so little left here to face.


In their embarrassment they've become terribly self-absorbed.


They know that, too.


And truly, they're afraid.
They know their princess colors are no match for the hawks,
vultures, spiders, owls, coyotes,
snakes and red ants.


It was different where they came from.


And, as I turned to leave,
behind a family running to the movies,


one said they're like a lot of the early white settlers
in these ways,


for whom it will take awhile
to become people again,


if they ever do.