Bustling Old Pasadena nightlife brings excitement. Colorado Boulevard rush-hour traffic tests patience. At sunrise, Victory Park surrounds walkers with meditative quiet.
Pasadena locales can solicit distinct moods, as our Poet Laureate Robert Savino Oventile considers here in his “Mood Poem.”
Mood Poem
1. Shatford Library
A folio rests open on a table:
Bruegel’s two monkeys, chained
In a thick wall’s small portal.
One looks out onto Antwerp,
The other to me; I look
Out to Colorado Boulevard.
The crisp blue gives brisk uplift,
my mind’s broken crockery
settled, swept up, and stowed away.
2. Mirror Pools
From a cloudless August sky
Two mallards splash down into the north pool.
Heat keeps students still in shade
And brings me a memory of grackles
Drinking from a square cement pond,
their remote Mojave oasis.
Imagine: in that vast desert expanse,
The lecture hall mirrored in the pond,
Posing there the Sphinx’s question.
3. Allen A-Line Station
Waiting on the platform
The traffic’s stereo din
Holds the ears in distraction.
Grey clouds cover Mt. Wilson,
Top to bottom. A westbound train
Blocks the clouds from view.
With discreet silence, raindrops
Land on the concrete. The petrichor
Makes an aesthete of my nose.
— Robert Savino Oventile
Local News Pasadena (LNP) publishes poems grounded in current news events from the greater Pasadena, California area. Submit your own poetry here.
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