View from the Headlands

The longer I know it, my husband says, this place,

the worse I know it is—the ruined,

the once. Paradise once (we think), and still

the hills, the bridge: some perfect gleaming headway,

hills falling down into October, brown, browner, sparks

of the papery eucalyptus. How do you even

talk about that? Looking down: one person’s

glimmering pasts, someone else’s ruined moment,

five generations, or three, at the intersection

of Esperanza and Home.

We tracked the last ridge, mustard pollen

clinging to our shoes. The night sure

to devolve into real estate gossip, the way

farmland = strip mall, given enough rope.

The moon hung, or was tethered, low in its cradle.

Down below, headlights, sirens. Women

with their silly little dogs. And behind the first hill

our neighborhood, gentrifying/corroding, strung out

along the streetcar, the sweet, skinny Armenian grocery clerk

hauling in the cantaloupes as the lights go on

in the apartment upstairs. How much more

can I tell you, you who have your own

(broken, ultimate) home? And the surer, he said, I am—

This untenable near-island, eroding at the edges.