Rosemead by Mike Walgenbach

As my feet tread carefully the ground in Rosemead, California,

My head considered the air from Auburn, Alabama,

Reviewing God, gold, and guns.

Mises fought Keynsians and Socialist fiat;

Nock the godless Wall St. Stalins.

Can you really know the world

From inside your car?

Out, out, inhale the space.

Feel the uneven upheaval of sidewalk rectangular,

Spot a spiny weed pushing through concrete cracks.

Peer down a lane and fix on the farthest point,

And measure it perpendicular to the street.

Pay attention.  Business doors are open

To greet the sun rising over San Jacinto.

Businesses don’t relent at night, opened doors still invite.

Owners lure you with a flickering neon lights

Don’t ignore the landmarks–

Burger King, Super A Foods, Denny’s.

The boulevard is a rush with streaks of light.

The crosswalk signal cold to the touch.

Drivers pull impatiently out of a gas station.

The boulevard smells of petroleum and burning cigarettes invigorate.

A shop is abandoned: a miscalculation.

A restaurant is closed.  

Dark windows at Goody’s obscure

The orange Naugahyde booths,

The clanging dishes, the calls for bacon and short stack,

Black coffee in ceramic white cups with red paisley designs,

The big short-order cook, and Helen.

A visit back to Auburn to Rockwell, Raico, Gordon, and Bloch.

Freedom called against 

Cherished memories of 6-laned Las Tunas Boulevard boyhood games:

Shakey’s pizza, miniature golf, and O’Donnell Chevrolet,

Gladys, Marguerite Thompson, dad's Willies, a house full of babies.

A '62, baby-blue Volkswagen bug.

Vincenzo’s--opaque and empty Chianti bottles held candles

On top of quaint red-and-white checkered tablecloths--is only a memory.

Mike Byers, from Santa Clarita, ate here on errands to the mission city.

Beto’s replaced it and courted local authorities.

Who can forget improbable Broadway Avenue?

The hospital where my grandfather lay dying uncomfortably with a broken hip.

A  few days later, Dad and I were viewing his body at Fernview Convalescent on San Gabriel Blvd.

Death reduced his body but not his head.  Though his body was small, his head was large.

We knelt a couple of respectful feet from my grandfather's body.

At my dad's side, I studied Pa's rigorous body.

Dad prayed, a rosary looped through his fingers and hung from his hand.

His Hail Mary quivered and his Pater Noster barely held.

In August 1966, he was the sole survivor of his family.

Without his mom, without his sister Josephine, and without his Pa.

Jim Beam massaged the memories of Ma, of Josephine, Denver, San Diego, and the War.

What would he do with their legacy?

Prayers were not inconsolable. 

My father's intersecting mind reviewed his father's storied life.

Pa's body was smaller than I’d remembered him.

The world seemed black and white and stark.

But even at that moment, holiness and prayer prevailed and colored it back again with love and life resurrected from death.