La Brea Ranch once seemed remote,
Now Tinsel Town surrounds.
Despite one hundred years of digs,
Discovery still astounds.
The Chumash people roamed the land
Before the Spanish hordes.
They used the seeping, sticky pitch
To seal canoes of boards.
A resource for a thousand years,
A hidden trap for longer,
As solid as soft river mud,
It's grip was so much stronger.
For thirty thousand years and more,
The trap has captured prey.
The prey attracted carnivores,
The sticky ooze said, "Stay."
For bison, mammoth, mastodon
Came wolf and saber tooth.
"There's not such thing as a free lunch,"
Is still a vital truth.
Five hundred wolf skulls since removed
And mounted on the wall.
From tusk to tail, a mammoth's frame's
Much longer that it's tall.
There've been three million bones and more
Pulled from the tarry black.
The big unknown, how many hide
Still in a tangled stack.
I've seen the pits at Hancock Park,
Looked down at all the bones.
I've seen the seeps still bubble up,
Imagined shrieks and moans.
But there's one cry to chill the bones,
That rings across the years,
A single woman's stained remains,
Imagines family tears.
A sad misstep, or sacrifice,
Like in the Danish bog,
We can but speculate the facts
Lost to an ancient fog.
A treasure trove still spilling forth
To fill our knowledge base,
The Tar Pit Park near Hollywood,
A truly magic place.
Richard Higley © May 2, 2015
Maryanne Pitman did me the honor of painting the anchor picture for this work, Thank you Maryanne
