Palm Springs Never Had It So Good

by Lucinda Sands

Sun-pinked, curly,
wearing leopard print skivvies,
slightly overweight for 40,
you danced and hummed
in the cabin kitchen
while some of us played
backgammon and others looked on
with ony slightly pruned egos
awaiting your eggs over easy,
Canadian bacon and Chock Full of Nuts.
On the veranda we gave ourselves over
to morning Bloody Marys and Pinacoladas,
the Eagles and Lou who sang arias
in the canyon below us.
Air solft and calm with desert dry,
cacti plump and content on terracotta sand,
the desert seemed to like us there.
You said, "Palm Springs never had it so good."
That night, a centrury ago it seemed,
you promised a future and I knew you were lying.
I played well just as a good friend or a close relative would;
just as you did when your wealthy uncle made false promises.
After that, you went missing like the confused gold miner
we'd only read about in our history books;
Parched and delusional, never having found his fortune,
he wandered the salt flats for weeks before stumbling
into a town where he thought no one knew him,
where they asked where he'd been all this time,
and he asked himself who he was.