Poetry
The Main Drag
The ritual was known
As Dragging the Main
(Drag, to pass slowly or tediously),
Or the Main Drag; conducted
On Belmont Avenue,
Friday and Saturday nights.
Traffic, bumper-to-bumper,
Two cars wide, four lanes across.
Ostensibly, endless vehicles
Travelling in both directions
Over three miles long,
From Blackstone Avenue
At the Royale Drive-In
All the way to Roeding Park.
The purpose: reproduction,
Pairing of opposite sexes (or not).
Youth in shiny automobiles,
Their own, or their parent’s,
Trying to attract a mate.
Using cars, or car antics
To engage in courtship rituals.
In a manner of natural selection,
With hormones fulminating,
A subject male driving,
Or the carloads of eager females
Intent on sex this evening.
Males engage in ritualistic behaviors;
Exhibition of speed, burning rubber,
And drag-racing on side streets.
Lurid sound demonstrations;
Revving loud V-8 engines,
Horn honking, loud music, yelling.
Agonistic actions: fights,
Disputes over women in parking lots.
Or women fighting women for men.
Fleeing to the dark streets.
Playing the old hard-to-get,
Or the graceful submission.
West of the Mars Drive-In,
From the underpass (subway),
The Belmont Circle.
A European-style round-about
Designed by traffic engineers
In a time of modernism at City Hall.
With a giant American flag
Planted in red, white and blue
Petunias in the circle.
Where four streets come together,
Alongside the tree-lined park.
Every man or woman for themselves.
Motel Bel-Air
The State tore out everything
Including the sidewalks,
To make way for high-speed rail
And left us weed covered fields.
Bel-Air floated easily
Like a cloud
Over the rock façade
Of the motel office,
Coffee shop, dining room,
And banquet hall.
Three rock-covered pillars
Held up the overhang
For parking cars in the shade
While checking-in
(with luggage),
In the air-conditioned office
Of the Motel Bel-Air.
The manager and his wife
Lived in the apartment
With the flat-roof, upstairs.
Mowed lawn, trimmed shrubbery,
A kidney-shaped swimming pool.
720 West Olive Avenue
At North Motel Drive,
Near the railroad tracks
And Golden State Boulevard.
Each refrigerated motel-unit
Had a television and radio,
Clean sheets and towels,
Toilet, shower, closet.
A Gideon’s Bible
In the night-stand drawer.
That he wanted to live
In the Bel-Air Motel,
Drive a Bel-Air car,
And smoke Bel-Air cigarettes.
The Belmont Circle
A postcard picture, for sure.
A European-style
Traffic round-about.
A circular intersection
Cars and trucks flow endlessly
In one direction
About an inner circle.
Framed in boxwood
Adjacent to Roeding Park,
The Fresno Zoo.
A grassy traffic islet
With an American flag
Planted in petunias
That one man tended.
Inside the post-war years
In a new era of modernity
With big cars of steel,
Lots of chrome,
And cheap gasoline,
The Central Valley town
Spun around the Belmont Circle.
City traffic engineers
Put forth a plan
To merge three streets
With Golden State Boulevard,
And the four-lane subway
Under Southern Pacific tracks.
Like they do in Europe,
A traffic carousel
Bestowed upon its citizens.
One man cared for the flowers
That were the waving flag
Of red, white, and blue.
A carefully tended flower garden
In the middle of the round.
The fastidious banner
Flaunted the city’s patriotism,
For the benefit of tourists,
Or lost travelers on their way
To somewhere else:
Los Angeles, San Francisco
Or Yosemite National Park.
It was one man’s job
Through care and diligence,
Kept the flag’s wafture
Of the tender perennials.