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California Dreaming

David Chandler

Feb 28 2011

0 mins

Driving to Oregon in ’66—

October or November? I forget—

we passed through Santa This and then San That as fields of silver grass

fell into the Pacific on our left.

The Beatles on the Beetle’s radio 

lifted us up like birds or bits of trash. 

“Good Day, Sunshine,” they sang. 

“Oh yes,” we answered back.

Far down, the ocean lumbered in, 

a glistening, unwary beast

as murderous, bleak

and inescapable

as Vietnam on a black and white TV.

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