Editor's Note: We asked and you answered ... more than a dozen stories or poems about Los Gatos have been shared with us on our Los Gatos Jubilee Facebook page, or at the end of posts on this site for publication beginning Aug. 10, 2012, in honor of the town's quasquicentennial celebration. This is the second submission, written by Los Gatos Poet Laureate Parthenia Hicks, paying homage to the town we all love so much on We're joining the Museums of Los Gatos StoryShare project and sharing with them your contributions here.
Song of Los Gatos
On a plump August afternoon
Sweet as the juice of wild cherries
We see her
Jewel of the Valley
Gateway to the Pacific Rim
With her floor of silken grasses
And her ceiling of oak and sycamore
Redwoods and weeping willow
Her Creek Trail
Footpath of a million steps
Her hand-blown glassy lake
Where on any simple day
A small boat glides
Quiet as a breath
As geese form a circle around her
Fanning out like stars in water
Her parks – so many – fill and empty
With her people, her mourning
Doves and Great Blue Herons
Egrets, mallards, turtles and
Solitary sandpipers
The jewels within the jewel
Her history is etched upon her face
Earthquakes, fires and floods
That prop her up and build her character
Though all the links of time:
Orchards
Forbes Mill
Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad
Mountain Charley McKiernan
The Opera House
A Brazilian soccer team
Netflix and the Apple store
A state-of-the-art library
At the close of a warm yellow day
As children hide in oaken groves
When all her parks are filled with echoes
The shopkeepers lock their doors as
The deer lie down like backyard
Dogs and wildflowers
Close their mouths
At the bluing of the moon
Her children begin to dream
While the spirit of the mountain lion
Stands like a holy sentinel
Guarding a prize
Where love is found and lost and found again
The unbroken song of Los Gatos lifts its steady voice.
