California Love Song
To ride the Ferris wheel on a winter night in Santa Monica,
playing nostalgic songs on a Marine harmonica,
thinking about the past, thinking about everything
Los Angeles has meant to me, is that too much to ask?
To kiss on the calliope and uproot world tyranny
and strum a rhythm guitar Ron Wood would envy,
to long for the lost, to love what lasts, to sing
idolatrous phrases to the stars, is that too much to ask?
Arm in arm to gallivant, to lark, to crow, to bask
in a wigwam of circus-colored atomic smog,
to quaff a plastic cup of nepenthean eggnog
over one more round of boardwalk Skee-Ball,
to trade my ocean for a waterfall,
to live with you or not at all, is that too much to ask?
by Campbell McGrath
from Nouns and Verbs, New and Selected Poems
Harper Collins, 2019