Song of Riverside

SONG OF RIVERSIDE

Riverside remembers itself, slowly, its valley keeping stories, murmuring memories.

Life rises here and lingers; morning comes, the city inhales, then exhales—again, and again.

MORNING

I rise above the valley, the city spreads like an open palm, lines of streets fanning, unfurling, arteries pulsing with the morning, the sun lifting itself over the San Bernardinos and flinging its rays into every cul-de-sac, every warehouse roof, every orange grove still clinging to the memory of an older century.

Light loosens itself across the valley like a hand opening after a long night.

The Santa Ana Riverbed curves like a serpent of ochre and green winding through the basin, its willows and sycamores bending, bowing, hidden birds startling upward in sudden bursts.

I sweep across Mount Rubidoux, its granite flanks crowned with a cross, pilgrims climbing its switchbacks— joggers, lovers, companions of all ages with dogs.

Flabob Airport, west of Mount Rubidoux, its planes circling, engines droning, wings tracing arcs above the silent riverbed.

The mountain forever watching, the city spinning its quiet pulse.

Downtown rises compact and proud: Mission Inn sprawling in its ornate stone dream, the Fox Theater glowing in Spanish revival dress, City Hall's mirrored cubes flashing the sky back at itself, the courthouse standing like a solemn oracle, UCR's bell chiming faintly eastward— a call and response between learning and labor.

Fairmount Park spreads green and patient, Lake Evans mirroring clouds and ducks, paddleboats drifting beneath Montezuma bald cypresses and palms.

Bonaminio Park opens its diamonds, weekend warriors swinging for fences, children scattering laughter through dust.

Stubborn citrus groves quilt patches of flatland, rows in strict geometry mingling with stucco homes, while UCR climbs the slope, Botanic Gardens rising like a small, deliberate Eden.

Students move through courtyards with books and earbuds, ambitions lifting lightly into the desert wind.

University Avenue stretches outward— neon, taquerías, motels glowing with weary travelers.

Arlington whispers of horse-drawn days, the Gage Canal carrying water's long memory.

Casa Blanca hums with mercados and murals, smoke of carne asada drifting through side streets.

Eastside keeps the city's first breath— Lincoln Park bright with drums and food smoke, the Cesar Chavez Community Center humming with murals, dance, and speech.

Magnolia Center grids itself with storefronts and churches.

Riverside City College stands proud in brick and resolve.

California Citrus State Historic Park preserves its groves like scripture, orange trees breathing the scent of an empire.

Freeways curl and divide— the 91, the 60, the 215— ceaseless caravans threading the Inland Empire.

Victoria Avenue runs straight as a dream, a cathedral of eucalyptus and palms.

And scattered amid the roar— the cemeteries: Olivewood, Evergreen, Riverside National, oases of stillness where grass softens the earth.

Here lie orchard workers and soldiers, teachers and shopkeepers, their years carved in stone, their lives folded back into the valley's soil.

From this height the city breathes— sirens and music, concrete and orange blossom, prayer and ambition braided together.

I see the land itself in time-lapse: tectonic plates grinding, a shallow sea retreating, shells pressed into stone, desert cracked open to welcome rivers.

Sage, sycamore, cottonwood— then man with canals, groves, freeways poured like tar.

And first, the people of this place: Cahuilla, Serrano, Luiseño, keepers of water and song, living with the land as one breath, reading weather in wind and cloud, trusting the earth to remember them.

Even now, beneath pavement and pipe, their presence murmurs, pressed into the ground like a held breath.

AFTERNOON

Then came the padres, brown robes brushing sage, bells tolling from the Camino Real— mercy braided with domination.

Water poured in Christ's name, hands bound to mission labor, hymns mingling with cries of loss.

The rancheros followed— horses moving like wind across chaparral, guitars strummed through dusk, names laid gently on hills and arroyos: San Bernardino, Jurupa, Rubidoux.

Names that remain like stones in the riverbed.

Louis Rubidoux carved his rancho here, his name climbing the granite peak where hawks still ride thermals.

Flags changed hands. Old ways slipped through time's fingers. The river bore witness to it all.

Juan Bandini claimed Rancho Jurupa, its vastness pressing outward beyond measure, cattle grazing where freeways would roar.

Beneath the rancho lay an older village, its hearthstones buried but not erased. The land held both without judgment.

Then came John Wesley North, abolitionist, reformer, dreamer, seeing not just orchards but conscience, a city planted like a vineyard with intention and belief.

Ambition moved through the valley with blistered hands and a clean moral vocabulary.

Canals bent the river's wandering will. Orange groves spread luminous and exact.

Incorporation followed. The county seat rose. With brick and ceremony, the civic voice rose.

Frank Miller arrived with spectacle and faith in beauty— The Mission Inn rising as a cathedral of hospitality, a city adorning itself with the world.

O North, O Miller— your visions were not without shadow. Some voices were drowned, some histories paved over.

Yet you planted an ethos, and the city grew from many mothers.

The land remembers all of it. The past is sediment, not shadow.

Each age inscribed its verse, none erasing the others.

EVENING

Riverside is not finished. It is not merely memory.

It is a living organism, shedding skin, sprouting new growth.

I see its future shimmer— students filling schools, voices rising in many tongues, scientists reading drought in rivers, musicians sending saxophone cries into night air, beauty insisting on itself.

The Fox Theater glows still. Fairmount Park gathers laughter. The Santa Ana River persists, quiet and patient.

Riverside lacks borrowed glamour. It is grit and staying power— sunburn and callus, dust after Santa Ana winds, and suddenly, orange blossom fragrance that stops even the bitter-hearted.

Its music is a chorus: banda, church choirs, jazz, hip hop, mariachi— joy braided into dusk.

The Cheech glows quietly, a pulse of color and memory, reminding Riverside—and beyond— that some stories are only now finding their voice.

It endures fire, flood, and quake, judgment and neglect, and still, it endures.

Fireworks burst over Mount Rubidoux, faces lifted to the same sky. For a moment, we are one city.

The city leans its tired weight against my life, and I do not move away.

This is the place of my first awakenings.

Boyhood unfolded here— scraped knees, tennis courts shimmering in heat.

Adolescence followed— longings unnamed, rivalries sharp, the clumsy rituals of becoming.

Manhood arrived quietly: work, marriage, the echo of a child's laughter.

Commutes and grocery lists, brake lights and deadlines, wondering what the poets would make of such a life.

Now I am retired— not an ending, but a second sunrise.

I walk unhurried. These streets unfold beneath my wife's hand in mine.

Our dogs trot beside us, tails wagging like small banners of joy.

Life brushes past, noticed and familiar.

I rest beneath the shade of trees that will outlive me.

This is my patch of ground, my Yoknapatawpha, my corner of the cosmos.

Here my life has been written— in the small marks my life has left behind, in sweat on courts, in laughter across kitchen tables.

So if you see me— ambling with groceries, dozing on a park bench, climbing Mount Rubidoux with more resolve than grace— nod your head.

Yes.

This is where I belong.

This city—in all its many-ness— is whole.

And I— grateful, imperfect— am home.