Pave Pepper launch site at evening, Vandenberg AFB

Unlike on Minot alerts, you could step outside the door and enjoy the scenery.  Also, the LCC was above ground with a parking lot next door and a fenced in enclosure around the entrance.


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 ex-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.

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