I

lying on my back on the front lawn on hill street, age 5 maybe

summertime sun warm on my face and legs      long braids tangled behind a thin cotton shirt

staring up into a cloudless sky   listening to the constant drone of planes

taking off from douglas airfield up on ocean park blvd.

the skies were so clear and blue in those days   some would say robin’s egg blue

impressionist blue    blue the rich color that can only be found in true innocence

i spent a lifetime searching for skies that color again in santa monica’s ocean park

later, a gun-metal gray  crept into those very skies when the santa ana’s weren’t blowing

heralding that everything was about to change

normally, some say         perfectly!   say others privileged to be living there today in 2013

later, this tenuous progress     laid  ocean park out      unprepared and exposed   about to be raped

like the rest of the westside beach towns             about to be violated by greed

once the  unspoken decree came down that only the very wealthy deserved to waken

to the sound and scent of the sea outside their windows      or to walk their coffee and their dogs across

speedway, then across ocean front walk  and onto the still-warm sands   to the water’s edge

on those blue sky or fog-shrouded silent  mornings….

soon, the kicked-to-the-curb poor headed further east or out of town

while old timers like me    say today that it all changed, progressed and morphed into something

unrecognizable…

but all those changes came much, much later

that summer’s day in 1957, there was only a kid on a lawn on hill street

dreamin’ five year old dreams and staring at that endless sky…

i wonder: who will believe all the old stories?