The Bret Harte Boardwalk

Light at the end of the tunnel-vision

Urban archeological survey of a new dig

 The light was celestial

The moment seemed right,
To go out into the descending night

 A palimpsest window 

of recent African-American culture

Sundown lingers in a absent stencil

 

 Many of those same cats

Sleeping at the high rise jailhouse tonight,

A prayer for them

 Past the prison industrial complex

A forgotten stretch

 Bold statements of phantom existence

Trippy lion of Bret Harte boardwalk, 

Note his name in letters along roof,

A soigne restaurant on the ground floor

 Next door the alarum of the Asclepion

 Not residential not quite commerical,
The Bret Harte boardwalk proper

 A chamber full of live birds,

A vacant piano,

Present as prologue

 Lord of the air, 

Monarch of birds,

Come unto us

 The road of consciousness

Leads to a universe of love

Last thoughts on the Bret Harte walkway

SF stands for science fiction

Why don't they give themselves a loan 

To reclaim the other end of the same block

 

 The same city block that began in ruination

Ends with a miniature fantasyland 

for our first responders

 I spilled down the four last blocks

To a dramatic scene at the Port

Huge container ships under tow

Lit-up and unloaded

 Then like an abrupt film-cut

Night had fallen

The way to San Jose

September 2015

Notes:
Unless the proprietors of the Bret Harte boardwalk meant to honor the Canadian wrestler, Bret Hart, one assumes they intended Bret Harte the American author.

from Wikipedia:

Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York. He was named Francis Brett Hart after his great-grandfather, Francis Brett. When he was young, his father, Henry, changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Henry's father was Bernard Hart, an Orthodox Jewish immigrant who flourished as a merchant, becoming one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte.
An avid reader as a boy, Harte published his first work at age 11, a satirical poem titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Rather than attracting praise, the poem garnered ridicule from his family. As an adult, he recalled to a friend, "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse".
His formal schooling ended when he was 13, in 1849.He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coastal town of Union (now Arcata) a settlement on Humboldt bay that was established as a provisioning center for mining camps in the interior.

His success grew out of his appearances in popular Californian periodicals of the time. 

Harte's best known work is "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" a short story.

 Mark Twain nursed a bitter personal dislike for Harte.

 Asclepion was the name given to healing temples in ancient greece.