Wandering down by the Point,
Navigating by dim window-light,
The winter waves chew on the sea rocks.
Night gusting, the west is black,
Bottomless.

Admiring Tor House there,
Nesting on her Indian fire-scar, embraced
Between twin property lines and
Hawk Tower perched proud on her shoulder,
You’d think she’d always been at
26 3 0 4 Ocean View Avenue,
or at least
Dropped there by a passing glacier —

But the stone lies

— or is it whispering,

“The troubling truthfulness of things!
This proud prominence humbled by a crop of English cottages —
How inhuman when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of puppy and poopings walled with dirt road;
No intrusion but two or three poets picnicking,
Or a few golfers resting their bags on the outcrop rock-heads —
Now the spoiler has come: do I care?
You and I, Cassandra.
We have all time — but not so much patience
for pretty little lies.”

By the year of our House, 19 19,
Mr. Ford rolled out three million cars,
Cars that made Model-T towns like Carmel,
Cars that remade America.
Carmel had her share of them,
and Robin and Una had theirs.

Hotels and theaters, a motorlodge,
A scenic drive and cliffside golf:
Car-mel was well on her way
When the Point went up for sale,

So inevitable a place
For such an aspiring pair
Of jobless, unpublished, romantics from L.A.,
Who snatched up lots one through sixteen
with dad’s inheritance
and mom’s bankroll.

A failure at war no better at peace,
Aging rhymester hired him a man
To build him a myth, and instruct him
in the metric of stone.