Santa Monica 3/23

All Poems, For Children, Gardens, Santa Monica 3/23, Trips and Places

Santa Monica is a Garden

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Santa Monica is a garden.

Blooming year round.

Azaleas, snapdragons, magnolias.

Camellias, geraniums, rosemary.

Daisies, echeverias, trumpets.

Hale and hearty.

Among ferns, ivy, agaves.

Who can resist its pull?

Its sidewalks, botanical displays.

Perfumeries.

Mood elevators.

But if you ask me which flower I miss most.

When not in Santa Monica.

I’d have to say Bird of Paradise.

A cross between plant and bird.

Orange and blue plumed flock.

Heads cocking this way, that.

Can’t help but hear squawk, squawk.

 

Lynn Benjamin

March 5, 2023

 

All Poems, Humor, Santa Monica 3/23, Trips and Places

Room Safe

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Touched down at LAX at two pm.

Though bodies registered five.

No matter what we did, where we went.

Couldn’t fool ourselves.

First stop, Wyndham Days Inn.

On Santa Monica.

Between Stanford and Berkley.

To a basic room.

Bed, bath, desk.

But I swore I saw a safe.

To stowe away my purse.

Which I didn’t do.

Cause we ran out.

To catch the sun.

And our grandboys.

But, I obsessed about that safe.

Regretted not using it.

In such a plain room.

No place to hide anything.

We returned at nine thirty.

Heads reminding us it was truly after midnight.

I told myself I’d use that safe.

But, to my chagrin, there was no safe.

No safe at all.

Only a black microwave!

Whose numbers I mistook for those on a security box.

Perception and memory foiled.

Trompe l’oeil in obvious view.

Harried brain assembled safe.

For bleary eyes to undo!

 

Lynn Benjamin

March 4, 2023