Poetry, Part Twenty-two

I grew up in California. From the very early 50's, until 1973, when I finally left to join the Air Force, I spent all of my youthful years there. So far, while I have returned many times to visit friends and family, I have never gone back there to live.

The state may have its mountains and deserts and burgeoning cities, but the coastline is what I always recall. Obviously, for me, with my time pursuing a military career during the Cold War and Vietnam War, I also saw the state through a military perspective. Throughout the 70's, for me it was the Air Force, the Marines, and the military cemetery that dominated my thoughts.

California Coast

I have heard them stepping off
above the beaches of Vandenberg,
to splash a foot down the test range.
All those prints on Kwajelein
pattern a new misuse of the islands,
as closer we are
to shedding the wings on our weapons.

Yet Pendleton against the sea
fails to prove any urgency.
There I understand a sadness to the feeling
that men of earth still train to be tough.
They roll up eroding shores
while a sense of dust
wears at the fiber of former marines
who washed ashore years before.

South to San Diego I saw
efforts for our defense now outnumbered.
But as leisurely as most of the growing seems,
the age is years of losing youth through the wars.
Like the vessels in the harbor
no longer in commission,
even the view that is Point Loma will be sold.
Scraps in the way and discarded
like inconvenient memories.

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