Aphrodite in Los Angeles
       

Her hair was crazy with wind,
her face animated with chatter.

We slogged through a sea
of backed-up traffic,

bright baubles flashing
in the August heat.

Hands clamped to the wheel,
I drove on, determined to deliver

that goddess on time,
her fans across town gathering

at the brick university to hear
the hymns of praise. Between flurries

of words she'd pause,
lift an American Spirit

to her famous red pucker
and suck in, white smoke

curling around the cabin,
clouding my eyes

as she held her lens up
to the landscape and clicked:

a house she claimed
was shaped like a ship,

the manhole a mandala
inked in strange writing,

a Great Dane at the signal,
its proud snout sniffing hot air.

Beauty! She cried. There's so much
beauty in the world—just look at it!

And I did, though I could not yet see
what she saw, did not understand

the urgency in her voice
had little to do with getting there,

only a swatch of sky
in that window behind her

filling with gold and copper
light, glowing fiercer

as the sun went down
and distant wildfires raged on

in the sacred mountains San Bernardino.

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Copyright © 2016 Michelle Bitting All rights reserved
from The Couple Who Fell To Earth
C&R Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission