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Stage 1From Baldwin Hills, the city against the mountains in winter, a blanket of smog in the summer, is Oz, the city of Promise. And to live in Baldwin Hills, high above Crenshaw and its jazzy past, and Leimert Park, home to several poetry smackdowns, to live this high is to have made it in Oz and to know by your place on the hill, the percentage of obstruction to your view, exactly what is your place in the Oz-ian hierarchy. It is upon these hill that first drops of rain follow like a promise of even greater views to come, of crystal air to peer with Colorado or Arizona, or any of the arid star-filled states.Stage 2:The water cascades down Baldwill Hills like an Inverse horse shoe falls. Residents attempt to climb to the top like Salmon up a fish ladder. A particular rapid tears around Don Tomaso, filling the rows of boxes of garages beneath apartment buildings, slipping in through the cracks. The waters of Baldwin Hills will consume Crenshaw, a great tributary to its channel as the basin itself begins to turn into a lake marked by billboards and rooftops.Stage 3As the waters recede, the View Park convalescent home gleams on the hill, surrounded by the silt of successful consumption. Chairs, lamps, stereo speakers, iPods, computers, place settings, Steeler flags, bicycles. It stand brightly as if it had been sitting by the window, watching the rain, thinking about rains past, the rains of Mississippi, the rains of Alabama, Louisiana, rains that brought with it a kind of Old Testament unforgiveness, the merciless downpour of a decision too late to change. Its inhabitants did not find a clear escape. The rescue pontoons did not make it to the base of Baldwin Hills, claiming they got lost, while attempting to locate Rodeo Drive. -- MCM