exit.

               permanent

                                       for

                                                           else

                                bougainvillea                         somewhere

                                                                                                searching

                                                            bush daisies                                     spirits
                                                                                                                       gone

                                                                                                                    dwork like

                                                                        palm trees                                        the woo-

–                                                                                                                            into

                                                                                                                             ows,

                                                                                                                         shad-

                                                                                    pine needles                       into the

                                    apple tree                                ly to 
                                                                                   seem quiet-

           scent
  of parents

passionflower                gray figures, remini-

                                                                          Harry’s approach, these

                              bottle brush                         life will be dead soon. At

agave                         sider the most familiar people in your

                                                  
                                          needn’t lose their urgency even when you con-

     prickly pear         or let nature take it back. The exigencies of our lives

               obscure ranch homes reminiscent of birdhouses. Prune it back

START HERE AND READ UPWARDS to where hills and groves

In Los Angeles recently, my wife and I discovered in a plaque and a flight of stairs a memorial to the activist Harry Hay (1912-2002). He founded the Mattachine Society, probably the first gay rights group in the United States. Our poem, an elegy not unlike those stairs, seems to start on the ground and rise. 

“Giving votes in exchange for ideological support. To wit: identity politics  or homosexuals.” — engraved at the base of the Mattachine Steps, where Harry Hay founded a Mattachine Society (1950)