My mother had a dear friend, Gladys, who had a friend, Inez, both of blessed memory. Both lived close to where where I do in New Jersey. Gladys was a therapist, and Inez was the retired administrative assistant to the town’s school superintendent. It’s the job that makes sure the entire school district functions. I would often run into one or the other or both of them at the Montclair Art Museum or at meetings of the League of Women Voters. Lately our community, like many others, has become so wacky that even the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan organization devoted to researching the issues of our time, has become mired in controversy, but I digress.
One year I was chatting with Inez at the League’s annual holiday party. I was just back from visiting family in California. She told me that she was born in California and lived in Los Angeles during the 1920’s. She described a vivid childhood memory of fields of poinsettias being grown along Hollywood Boulevard. It’s difficult for me to imagine that a profoundly urban landscape could once have been agricultural. The image she detailed stuck with me, and out of it came what is and has been my only Christmas poem.
The poem, as does much of my writing, explores what we know, what we think we know and what remains unknowable. It appears in my collection, Cutting Room (Terrapin Books). As we go through this next wave of the pandemic, I wish you a happy and healthy New Year.
Jessica
Footprints of the Stars
Maria met Jesus wandering L.A. in 1932.
The real deal, not some long haired
messianic wannabe. He told her
he’d visited before. In ‘49 he panned
the Sacramento Valley, but did not stop
to watch gold rise off the ocean
the way it does in Malibu at sunset.
California reminds him of home,
warm and dry with decked out desperados
mining Hollywood Boulevard
for cash or a needleful. One time
he was born in East L.A.
Angelinos do not weather well
away from warmth. Jesus knows
the game of life in the wilderness,
the solitude of freeways,
how to avoid snow. Hid
his face that blizzard winter
stuck outside the Donner Pass.
Now he waters arid lots.
Poinsettias with nugget hearts
bloom and bleed along the Boulevard.
Jesus watches smog rise like amnesia
over the tar pits and cultivates
fields, studded like rhinestones
among gold’s rush and idols
of the silver screen. Few notice
his gardening, but in southern California
it never snows at Christmas.
Maria met Jesus wandering L.A. in 1932.
The real deal, not some long haired
messianic wannabe. He told her
he’d visited before. In ‘49 he panned
the Sacramento Valley, but did not stop
to watch gold rise off the ocean
the way it does in Malibu at sunset.
California reminds him of home,
warm and dry with decked out desperados
mining Hollywood Boulevard
for cash or a needleful. One time
he was born in East L.A.
Angelinos do not weather well
away from warmth. Jesus knows
the game of life in the wilderness,
the solitude of freeways,
how to avoid snow. Hid
his face that blizzard winter
stuck outside the Donner Pass.
Now he waters arid lots.
Poinsettias with nugget hearts
bloom and bleed along the Boulevard.
Jesus watches smog rise like amnesia
over the tar pits and cultivates
fields, studded like rhinestones
among gold’s rush and idols
of the silver screen. Few notice
his gardening, but in southern California
it never snows at Christmas.
I LOVE THIS
Powerful poem Jessica. So many rhythms and images I love, I.,e., poinsettias…nuggets, smog rises like amnesia over tar pits….very moving.