The Last Days of Proto-Spring

Oakland
Everyday is a revelation

The Flaneur finds it hard
to know what to call this time of year,
Friday five o'clock
The last working day of Winter

I went up a strange escalator

I found myself in a foamy Clorox lobby

Brother man is new I think

I never noticed him before

I had just disembarked
From public conveyance
That's that Kunst fish again

That's all right,

He doesn't notice me either

I was in an oddly

effervescent mood

Decided to explore 

This uptight building

Where they just scalped

 The rhododenron landscape

So sort of odd art

Young people's efforts

perhaps

What might have occurred

If Max Ernst or Rene Magritte

Had access to a 3-D printer

The back way out

Filipino guard got in the picture

Kind of glad he did

Equinoctal shadows

On the Neolithic stepping stones

Gridlock city

But still,

A tree grows in Oakland

In a brutalist Brancusi plant pot

A glimpse of the old downtown

That phantom building deserted

As ever in the convention center's shade

Oakland really needs 

To pull up its pants

and get to work

 18 March 2016

 2.

Palm Saturday

Lay the marble tea,

St Paul's tower cornerstone

Spruce so blue

St Paul's Episcopal church,

An African-American clergyman

Onslaught of a spiritual Spring

Bach's birthday this Holy Week

I'll try to return for the St John Passion,

Maybe not the entire three hours worth

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday

Remembering when Jesus was celebrated

As he rode into Jerusalem

I continued on to Lakeside Park

For herbal meditation

Across the water

from Christ the Light

In the green green grass

Singing along with melodies in my head,

So begins another Springtime

Green Leaves and the berries,

Little eggs are painted by

Mother bird eating cherries

-Donovan

There's my little darling diving duck

He's so nice
just a little stand-offish

As here he swims away

Into the canyon 

of the skyline's reflection

As the splendid oaks

Don their raiment au printemps

The fascinating arabesque oaks

They give this city its name

It's character and life

And beyond the oaks

the glorious sky

Where He will cometh with clouds
When He returns,
Amen

19 March 2016

(Note: Some may wonder where the accent circumflex 

over the "a" in Flaneur went

Gone because it's now a word in English,

The English language accommodated the voyeur

and the amateur long ago;

 More recently it has absorbed
the flaneur)