Today's poem is by Cathleen Calbert

Pacific Grove
       

Streets of small Victorians lead to the bay's
rocky coast. It's perfect. California's version

of Cornwall, with stone sea walls and seals
fat as cattle. Cormorants, Edward-Gorey-style,

pose in profile on promontories: alliteration
pours from me, I see. Who could help it?

People wave their anemone fingers in friendly
hellos on strolls through an actual downtown.

When local folks can't afford to stay, they cry
on social media: how will they ever get over

such windswept prettiness? I feel the same way,
in love with this mermaid of a town: its charm

costly, its song a drowning. And they do fall,
some who climb the high rocks, sorry to say.

I see the ambulances. But soon sirens roar off,
and the sleepy, dreamy days continue for us

while Salinas grinds out our fresh vegetables
and the unsung succumb to new viruses.

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Copyright © 2023 Cathleen Calbert All rights reserved
from Poetry London
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission