The Smog's Vibrant Gown

Half remembered, half
forgotten shapes of haze sustained
by one-way tickets & the wetsuit
drying on the back fence.   The light
may have been toxic but it was all we had.
Washed out colors aligned beneath
an offshore breeze studded w/gulls
“Nothing else seems to matter
when you’re plugged into the wave, esse”
said outside the 2 Mile Surf Shop in Bolinas
oddly similar to what I heard on Pier Street
Hermosa Beach circa 1974
(odd only because I remembered it)
hammered the glass portal (green
glass & the mirror avatar pulling the
sand out from under your sneakers
as a stray blade of sunlight cut away your shadow
like the mythic veil & the precision you cultivated
stolen from a timelessness that got lost in the
details.   The rusty bluewhite sludge an emblem of
the general decay perhaps the air around
Pompeii (for example) as your eyes (a darker
shade of diesel mist) replay episodes of
handmade palisades shimmering above.