Saying Good Bye to Los Angeles

How often do we who live here in the City of the Angels have to feel that ache when some one we have grown to love comes to the point where their life is taking them in a new direction. They are leaving our city. We know they will remember their days here. This is my farewell to them all. Here is a sunset shot for them looking west from my dental office on Sunset Boulevard.


TO TOAST FAREWELL
In the evening,
In London or in Budapest
Where warm nights rarely hang so still,
And when at dusk
The slipping sun reaches out,
Blood-red behind the wisps of clouds,
The gathering gown,
Deep night settles on
The remnants on another distant day,
You will remember
How the thick orange sky
Sank beneath the silhouette of tall palms,
Where warm sands
Edge out the Pacific's rim
And The City of Angels becomes a memory.


And when gathered
In high-draped halls
At table or beside the fire,
Contented then,
As talking bubbles
With thoughts you love to share,
When practiced tales,
The patch work of experience,
Delights the company with your wisdom,
Will you then
Fill up your glasses
With wine as red as any sky we've known,
And raise a toast
To friends so far away
In places where perhaps you’d rather be?

Waiting For Geppetto

Geppetto the carpenter, Pinocchio’s famed father- For Francoise whose daughter Maelise dances ballet with our daughter Maran, and whose sad chair went to Doctor McLeod's hospital















My arm is split, my legs are weak,
In fact they come apart,
You really shouldn’t sit on me
Unless you’re strong of heart,
And you should really understand
My useful days are done.
I’m waiting for Geppetto,
I’m praying he will come.

There was a time when I was new
A long, long time ago,
We left the wood shop in a cart
Six chairs in a row.
We even had a table
That came with us in the set.
The wanting of Geppetto
Had not dawned upon us yet.

Now I am old and broken too,
I’ve been fixed at many points,
And hard and crusty lumps of glue
Are bunging up my joints.
And should you sit upon me
I fear I’ll fall apart,
I’m waiting for Geppetto
To bring to me his art.















Geppetto, he could mend me
He’d bring out clamps and glue
He’d clean the crust from out my joints
And make me good as new.
So as you go about your day
Where ever you may roam
If you see Geppetto
Have him come and take me home.