La Brea Tar Pits
Posted: 19 May 2019, 20:47
La Brea Tar Pits
I came to Los Angeles for the Strip,
the nightclubs, the famous restaurants
where celebrities gather, picking
at their salads, and sipping wines
that would cost me a year’s rent.
In the heart of the city I found
something less common: tar pits
bubbling, as if waiting for drunks
to mistake them for spas.
Whole populations were swallowed here:
dire wolves, a mammoth, snails,
and millipedes whose feet
couldn’t walk away
from the gooey asphalt.
Were animals dumber then?
If a ground sloth was sinking
under a seething surface,
why would a saber-tooth follow it?
Because it couldn’t help itself?
The way my uncle couldn’t leave
his wife--though he knew
where their marriage was headed:
acrimony and alimony
consuming years of his life.
As I look at these creatures
from the safety of thousands of years,
I wonder, how many more years
will I live? Not nearly
as long as these tar pits....
I'll surely be forgotten long
before the legendary starlets
of the 30s were lost sight of,
their names swallowed
by Hollywood long,
long ago...
I came to Los Angeles for the Strip,
the nightclubs, the famous restaurants
where celebrities gather, picking
at their salads, and sipping wines
that would cost me a year’s rent.
In the heart of the city I found
something less common: tar pits
bubbling, as if waiting for drunks
to mistake them for spas.
Whole populations were swallowed here:
dire wolves, a mammoth, snails,
and millipedes whose feet
couldn’t walk away
from the gooey asphalt.
Were animals dumber then?
If a ground sloth was sinking
under a seething surface,
why would a saber-tooth follow it?
Because it couldn’t help itself?
The way my uncle couldn’t leave
his wife--though he knew
where their marriage was headed:
acrimony and alimony
consuming years of his life.
As I look at these creatures
from the safety of thousands of years,
I wonder, how many more years
will I live? Not nearly
as long as these tar pits....
I'll surely be forgotten long
before the legendary starlets
of the 30s were lost sight of,
their names swallowed
by Hollywood long,
long ago...