This is a longish walk, so, as you want, take your time!
Walk Sunday, June 26, 2005
Walk from home to 24th coffee & scone
To walk with
Up 24th to Diamond to Romero cross
Market to Rooftop down Corbett to Clayton
Up Clayton, up the Pemberton Steps
to Twin Peaks Drive, up steps to Tank Hill:
Pink Triangle
Pink Cunt
The canvas floats suspended
Down Twin Peaks
Transparent, unveiled through the barely lifted, close, gray fog:
Gay Pride weekend in the City
Donıt they know my fatherıs dead
And I am risen to look over the Bay
Over the City?
(And why would any, any way?)
Slants of various silvered light across the bay to the east
Waters that he once sailed, competitively
Boats, dark buoys & fierce youth:
Amazing how one accounts a history in one image:
Walk through bereavement
Walk through, walk amongst
One ghost goes, one comes back
A tisket, a tasket, a task:
To sit on these craggy rocks
Drizzling fog on fingers that write:
³Purple Perennial
Lily Family
³Ithurielıs Spear²
(The white cross inside the flower
The pistil)
First named in ³Paradise Lost², the signage posted on the fence
over a lavender meadow - gentle, vibrant petals, open -
shifting in bunches - a short way, down the cliff:
Write something down
A Blue Jay leaves its rock:
An eyeball demands clarity
Before death, after death
Let it be known, he wants to say
There is none.
*
Tank Hill down Twin Peaks to Clayton to 17th
To the stairs up Ashbury Heights to Terrace
Down Terrace into Corona Heights
The trail up the rocks over the cap and down
The amazing gray bellied hawk feathers slightly a-twist -
Atop the pine on the north a fearless mocking bird attacks
The hawk shifts his head to repel, regains a silence
I sit down to look up and share:
Down the hill into Randall Park, the
Lower level, the community garden in wooden boxes and barrels:
Note the highflying artichokes crowns and purpling leaves
Next to the basketball courts down to State Street
Down the steps to Eureka to Market down Market
To Castro to 18th:
The ³C² Club
Comedy, Clits, Cakeı
A poster on a pole, womenıs faces
18th Street, a little below Castro.
*
Stop to shop for oats at Bi-Rite, the grocery
³Spay Free Blueberries from the Bi-Rite Family Farm²
hand-inked, white label overlooks the berries in little gray baskets:
Vigilant, amused, I show management (ha ha) the missing ³R²:
*
One block up Guerrero her breasts in profile
against an open, black iron gate
The lavender blouse
Dark flowering bougainvillea
Her almost odd, ceramic, white flesh:
*
The poetıs widow in a lemon top
A little pigeon-toed
Wanders down the hills of this Valley
Smiles rhythmically to each passerby
Perpetually, it appears, wounded and alone:
I know the woman from long ago
I cannot bring myself to say hello.
Home to Sandy's garden, roses in full wheel
Rose, white and yellow
The flowers I can never fully name:
Absence is presence:
Father, gradually, an unfolding flame.
Stephen Vincent
June 26, 2005
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