Poetry: 623 De La Vista

It was a breakthrough
time, yet i did not know it,
a one-room rental
atop a small house
on a dead-end street,
with a millionaire’s view
of the ocean and islands.
Not much furniture,
awareness or judgment
then at twenty-four,
my pre-frontal cortex
still forming, almost the age
my parents were when
they had me. You might call
it innocence, but it was less
than that, a time of
watercolor afternoons
and Neptune’s Coup
at sunset, the ocean
taking over the sky.
I was a tangled mess,
yet something was going on
there at the molten core
that you would not notice
on the mantle or crust,
Pangaea separating
into the known continents
of my identity,
subduction of tectonic
plates, formation of Andes,
Sierra and Himalaya.
It was a two-block street,
leading nowhere, but in
a town like Santa Barbara,
you could not replicate
it anywhere else
on the planet.

© Jon Obermeyer 2023 Salsipuedes: Santa Barbara Poems (2nd Edition)

Jon Obermeyer was born at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara during Old Spanish Days. He attended Hollister Elementary, Foothill Elementary, La Colina Junior High School, graduating from Santa Barbara High School in 1976. He is a graduate of Westmont College and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he served as Associate Poetry Editor of The Greensboro Review. Jon is the author of over 30 books, including collections of poetry, short fiction and essay, as well as memoir, writing guides and business titles. He lives in Northern California.