Population Control
North on Hwy 101
past the bustle of L.A.,
and Buellton’s famous pea soup,
the small sign reads “Morro Bay,
Population 10,000.”
My past tugs and pulls me here.
I drive to the beach, our beach
where we toasted our first year,
and watch the windswept sand
dance in a frenzy atop
the dune’s shifting crest and think
of why our dance had to stop:
like the sand, I was swept up
and drawn into the wind’s whirl,
into the arms of other men
not content to be your girl.
I drive away to the east,
the chaparral, like loose threads
of a worn blanket, poke up
through the hills’ craggy beds,
unwelcoming, reminding me
that I left you, I left here;
this place is no longer mine.
Population nine thousand,
Nine hundred and ninety-nine.