And now a tune I haven’t heard for years

Probably not since it last left the charts

Back in L.A. in 1969.

I can’t believe I know the words by heart

And can’t think of a girl to blame them on.

Every lovesick summer has its song,

And this one I pretended to despise,

But if I was alone when it came on,

I turned it up full-blast to sing along—

A primal scream in croaky baritone,

The notes all flat, the lyrics mostly slurred.

No wonder I spent so much time alone

Making the rounds in Dad’s old Thunderbird.

Some nights I drove down to the beach to park

And walk along the railings of the pier.

The water down below was cold and dark,

The waves monotonous against the shore.

The darkness and the mist, the midnight sea,

The flickering lights reflected from the city—

A perfect setting for a boy like me,

The Cecil B. DeMille of my self-pity.

I thought by now I’d left those nights behind,

Lost like the girls that I could never get,

Gone with the years, junked with the old T-Bird.

But one old song, a stretch of empty road,

Can open up a door and let them fall

Tumbling like boxes from a dusty shelf,

Tightening my throat for no reason at all,

Bringing on tears shed only for myself.

IN CHANDLER COUNTRY

California night. The Devil’s wind,

the Santa Ana, blows in from the east,

raging through the canyon like a drunk

screaming in a bar.

The air tastes like

a stubbed-out cigarette. But why complain?

The weather’s fine as long as you don’t breathe.

Just lean back on the sweat-stained furniture,

lights turned out, windows shut against the storm,

and count your blessings.

Another sleepless night,

when every wrinkle in the bedsheet scratches

like a dry razor on a sunburned cheek,

when even ten-year whiskey tastes like sand,

and quiet women in the kitchen run

their fingers on the edges of a knife

and eye their husbands’ necks. I wish them luck.

Tonight it seems that if I took the coins

out of my pocket and tossed them in the air

they’d stay a moment glistening like a net

slowly falling through dark water.

I remember

the headlights of the cars parked on the beach,

the narrow beams dissolving on the dark

surface of the lake, voices arguing

about the forms, the crackling radio,

the sheeted body lying on the sand,

the trawling net still damp beside it. No,

she wasn’t beautiful—but at that age

when youth itself becomes a kind of beauty—

“Taking good care of your clients, Marlowe?”

Relentlessly the wind blows on. Next door

catching a scent, the dogs begin to howl.

Lean, furious, raw-eyed from the storm,

packs of coyotes come down from the hills

where there is nothing left to hunt.

IN CHEEVER COUNTRY

Half an hour north of Grand Central