SONG FOR EL CERRITO
tess taylor

I used to hate its working-class bungalows, grid planning,
power-lines sawing hillsides. It shamed me

the way my parents did for not making more money.
Now it looks like a Diebenkorn.

Now I want even the bad wood siding
in our living room, my mother’s aging

books on modern Indian thought. Her tanpura
in sunlight. I want fox-weed in railroad trestles,

the endangered frogs in our gully.
I want a lemon tree.

On San Pablo, polyester collectibles, a folk-song store,
the “All-Button Emporium: Open 10-4  Saturday’s.”

How did love lodge in these?
It might be how marigold light

forgives even the traffic islands.
December only yellows the gingkoes and reddens the maples.

A stream smells rich under our house.
For Christmas, my sister and I steal

persimmons from neighbors’ yards.
Ten years on, I discover

how I keep falling in love here
among pickups and blackberry brambles.

Tonight it happened again:
We drove a bad car to the beach.