Poem of the Week: 3.23.23

"Shadows in the Wash"

Shadows in the Wash

by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira

What perpetua passes through each hour
What the sky remembers tomorrow
What spelling clouds leave behind blue

       I wanted to follow
       the phone lines, connect 
       to your voice
              They shocked instead

What shadows unwind in wind and wire
What the Wash spits out after the rain
What 
       to 
              do 
                     with a 
                            beautiful day 
alone

---

Read by the poet:

---

---

Thank you for reading the Poem of the Week!

My hometown of Santa Clarita shares its name with the river that runs through the valley, except there isn’t really a river. What once was a flowing body of water has dried up. Only a few times a year when rain graces the semi-desert regions of Southern California does the Santa Clarita River actually live up to its name and flow.

Otherwise, it’s the Wash. I spent a lot of time in the Wash growing up, going to and from school, friend’s houses, the mall. With all the rain we’ve had lately in LA, I remember the days I spent in that in between place—somewhat a desert, not always a river—and the yearly surprises of the Wash flowing again.

“Shadows in the Wash” was a poem I wrote a few years ago reflecting on the Wash and the emotions that grew with me there. As I was digging through my writing to find something for this week, I came across some random prose I wrote in honor of the Wash. It was written around the same time as this poem, so I thought I’d include it with this week’s poem. Here’s a little taste of the Wash and whatever was running through early 20s Ricky’s mind:

The Wash felt like a true backyard, expansive and free while still close to home. In a suburb increasingly cramped with more houses and more cars and more stores, the Wash is a place of imagination. Where the birds convened to gossip, where the tops of fences creaked and sagged, where the wilderness remained. It was here that I learned the nuance of color through the varied attempts of green, the ever present yellow and browns, the blue that encircled us all, the purples pinks and yellows that danced into the nighttime, the silverish tan of the dust in the moonlight. It was here that I escaped in my youth, here where I could take a deep breath.

It was here that I dreamed as I rode my bike to middle school of seeing a spaceship hurtling down and crashing into the dried up riverbed. I dreamed of ditching my bike, hopping the fence, running down to the fiery crash site, sprinting over the gopher holes and the rocks and bottle shards. I dreamed of finding the Green Lantern barely alive in the wreckage, of him silently waiting for my arrival, of his words of destiny and promise, of the power and responsibility he would bestow upon me before dissolving in a green glow. It was here that I daydreamed of becoming a hero, and it made the loneliness and the sadness take on a meaning. I knew that if I kept walking or pedaling or pushing I would eventually get there and get through, I just had to follow the path.

Following, Ricky