in the desert

Last weekend, I watched one of my favorite

Charlie Chan films, CASTLE IN THE DESERT (1942)

which reminded me of this chapter

from the autobiography I'm working on:

Castle in the Desert

When I lived in New York

I used to go to an old movie theater,

red as a velvet heart inside 

with lamps on the walls.

I watched My Little Chickadee

with W.C. Fields and Mae West,

The Marx Brothers and Charlie Chan

finding the Castle in the Desert.

Homesick in one of the biggest

cities in the world, I knew

I was ready to leave

when it became my routine to go

to The Museum of Natural History.

Somewhere in all those displays

I would find the great wall of glass

holding a captured recreation of

the Pacific Northwest rain forest,

staring into the green light of

birdsongs, cedars and firs

in the middle of skyscrapers.

I used to have a topsecret way of

sneaking into that amazing museum.

(I won't say how in case someone else

is using the same method.)

Also, I realize now how lucky I was

to grow up seeing all those old films

in movie theaters.