JOAN E. BAUER

Griffith Park       

The temple dome observatory was built in '35
& so my father would have known about it

on Mount Hollywood near his parents' home
in Glendale. Perhaps he glimpsed it, traveling

San Fernando Road or Highway 99 then south
on Los Feliz to LA City College where he

fenced & studied engineering. Though after
a mysterious duel, on his arm, a scar for life.

Other wounds: his badly mismatched parents.
Their Infidelity Olympics. 

Surely he visited that Taj Mahal where earth
met sky & you could 'eyeball to the universe.' 

Perfect for a young man who, as a child, leaped
from a roof-top, thinking he could fly. 

Nicholas Ray directed a pulsing, revolutionary film
with bickering parents. Rebel Without a Cause

filmed at Griffith Park. Inside the dark planetarium,
the fiery end of the world. Outside, the knife fight— 

Just before he died, James Dean commissioned
a bronze bust of himself. Now it overlooks the park 

& you can frame him with the Hollywood sign
as backdrop. The father I knew was no rebel. 

Dutiful son, nose-to-the-grindstone, who could never
do enough to please his parents. That bronze of Dean. 

His downward gaze, the wavy hair.
Was there another father I never knew?

 

 

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