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.
