36 Hours In LA

Southern California

June Gloom smothers us with her mercy on

the Pacific Coast Highway, a pillow

pressed down on our slack jawed faces like Will

Sampson's Chief Broom gently dispatching

Jack Nicholson's R.P. McMurphy

in the movie before making good his

escape, both characters set free while we

mill about in the day room awaiting our

relentless cloudless meds, prisoners of

our quaint notions of L.A. - a lifetime’s

worth picked up willy-nilly like bits of

leaves, twigs and dog shit stuck to a good old-

fashioned mid-western snow man:  these winding

canyon roads infested with laid back ghosts

of long haired country rockers, Neil Young doomed

to gaze forever west from Zuma Beach,

the riddled Band, addled vapor ringing

the eternal flame of a Malibu

beach fire, Gram Parsons smoldering like

a votive in Joshua Tree while a

wry Randy Newman professes his love. 

Meanwhile, coffee at the hotel where we

gawk at John Irving, our only confirmed

celebrity sighting, a dour Yankee

warming his bones on Ocean Boulevard. 

homage

All La Glory

These guys never plug in before midnight

keeping unholy hours, playing without

a break until someone notices the

tanged rim of the sun through the mist rising

from Overlook Mountain, washes of chords

from the Sacred Harp cascade down rounded

ancient shoulders, blue runoff in rills, brooks,

streams, a river returning to the source

Eternal nightly gig, a trio now,

smoking, swapping japes as they unpack trunks

of old harmonies, flat and creased after

all these years, the long wait for a rhythm

section finally over, The Weight from

the top now, count off those four flat bass drum

thumps, smoking, swapping verses, time to kill

before the night winds wail and the others

stroll in, short trip back to the big pink house. 

Poem

Chest Fever

I gunned my 1959 Ford F-150 with

it’s ring shot FE V-8 engine, burning

oil, belching fire, crank thrumming,

setting off a deep vibration

that radiated out and engulfed

the quiet Catskill morning, through

West Saugerties, New York.  Overlook

Mountain lolled off to the north,

humped and blue behind the white cube

of the Esso station, two pumps

and one filthy bathroom.  I set the brake

and palmed the key chained to a piston

that hung just inside the repair bay

while the truck idled rough shod

through rising octaves.  For the record,

I washed my hands when I was

finished then revved the engine to a

crescendo and drove away.  It was only

later that I recalled the thin man

with the bushy beard, head huge

under a flying widows peak, buying

cigarettes and a Coke, lingering

near my Ford, summer 1968, absorbed

in the racket exploding under the hood. 

I was listening to Music From Big Pink,

not for the first time, when it hit

me, the V-8 sound of the greasy Lowrey

organ that drives Chest Fever, grateful

for my part, however small, in

Garth Hudson’s opus.