I have just returned from two weeks in Los Angeles, the City of Angels. There we rented a stucco cottage on Moore Street featuring a small secluded garden and hot tub. Eight brief poems came to be in that urban paradise. Paradise, the Persian Pairidaeza – ‘magic garden’ – is a word rich in mythic and religious reference. But the basic sense is a walled garden, a place of earthly delight. Paradise for me is a state of deep joyful awareness where the logical mind can relax, the senses can savor, and the imagination can play. A new poem will be posted each day over the next week.
Paradise: City of Angels (1)
Away from the mean streets of the city,
a garden of earthly delight,
paradise hidden behind a juniper hedge.