Sonnet: The Precious Few

My wand'ring often leads to Sacre-Coeur

When Fortune opts to place me in Paris

As if my aim though feckless and mission-free

Should hit the heart of the powdered dome so sure,

The satin ribbon of the Seine's a lure

And starting point for many a sight-see

Where I could rendezvous with french Marie

And maybe linger, kissing, pendant des heures,

Then later, hearts besotted, footsteps make

The well-worn lovers' trek to the wedding cake

On up the concrete stairs that suck the air

We climb onto La Butte from which we stare:

The streets and buildings fold beneath our view

The people, too, that leaves us the precious few.

16 April 2023

Sonnet: Open Cracks The Eye

When open cracks the eye to cloudy gray

 Outside like heaven or inside of sleep

I turn and close an hour more to stay

For dewy dreams to grow and so to reap,

When next I wake the sky is blue and bright

A nudge to imitate the risen sun

To work and sweat until the fall of night

Admits the possibility of fun,

But if sky frames them both, the need to choose

Excites emotion: guilt, ambition, lust

Desire to win and worry not to lose

A cause for action and, if not, disgust.

The Barroom Sage says though, "It's best to wait

To let the gods or nature settle Fate."

23 May 2023

Sonnet: Question

To the woman of the beat-up Subaru
Now absent from its gull-stained parking spot
My hopes and fears must I project on you
Each time I ponder where you are --- and are not,

Long days and nights along Pacific ledge
Whose brew of wind, fog, heat and cold
Distend the many months endured and edge
You near, perhaps, a better place to hold,

Imaginations sometime fail to rise
Above our circumstance, so Legacy
Takes root below the level of our eyes
But could address the higher mystery 
Of who you are; why choose the things you do
And what could change said course and what ensue.

Christmas Day 2023

Sonnet: Pause

Has stopped the music, keeping each in place

And silences of recesses arise

Pastoral past proposing to our eyes

An easeful pause and human kind of pace

Where sun and shadow on the landscape trace

A subtle tempo as our lives revise

To figure what is now a worthy prize

And bear and bobcat challenge center space.

This quiet we uneasily embrace

And dire circumstances temporize

Anticipated outcomes theorize

The while savings dwindling apace,

But hear the hammer pound the nail --- proof

Of life and said serenity goes poof.

Sonnet: Reworked Reality

Coronavirus novel reigning liege

Obscures the memory of former ways

Amid forgetful fog that serves to ease

Dissociation in these present days,

Perspective shrinks to match the changed routine

Confined to area of a too small room

Dictated by some notion of quarantine

And tempered by ability to zoom.

Less burdened by the past we strain to see

Reworked reality as yet opaque

And suffer so of future anxiety

Like waiting on a said-to-come earthquake,

Each moment seizing every partial clue

We push to birth entire worlds anew.

Sonnet: Patience

And stay-at-home the patience game of siege

The predator without, within the prey

Foretelling hours, days and weeks to squeeze

The spirits used to active work and play,

So flip another card to hope it fit

The sequence auguring a quick release

Reshuffling decks that tell more weeks to sit

And crave your favorite pastime rid of disease.

Beware though hidden cards and sleights of hand

Whose easy wins inflate a false bravado

For unbent dangers in the welcome land

Lay slyer snares than common sense could know,

A reckoning draws nearer to the time

Of placing faith and freedom on the line.

Journal: First Look

I was sequestered two and a half months in my apartment and neighborhood on a San Francisco hill without car or bus service. I had groceries and restaurant meals delivered. When it became obvious things wouldn't go back to normal soon, if ever, I bought a car. 

Journal entry: 21 May 2020

Yesterday was my first extensive tour of the city since the March 17 stay-at-home order. It's pretty grim: businesses boarded up with some attempts at art --- "You're doing good!" says the cartoon bear on the boards at Club Moderne (Taylor & Bush; where the Yong Sang used to be). Other art looked like graffiti but I didn't have time to peruse since I was driving, not riding a bus.

Outside of open restaurants stood masked figures who seemed more scattered than appropriately spaced and who were barred from entering by whatever device ---table, counter, chairs --- the establishment used to effect an obstacle. None of the excluded people were well-dressed nor were expected to be. Before, they would have been overshadowed  by strutting peacocks, clothes horses and the merely beautiful. Now, grim and gritty under the harsh light of a May day.

Maybe 20% of the population was out and of them many wore some sort of masking device ---scarves, proper non-medical masks, but those who didn't appeared defiant to my eyes, or clueless. One couple in their thirties was crossing Union Street at Franklin and seemed amused at the blue dust mask covering my mouth in the cab of my car. They were out for a stroll with no covering device I could see and thinking, possibly, "I'm okay and you're shit." But of the unmasked a set-upon defiance seemed to be the attitude. The woman crossing Sutter at Larkin had a backpack from which a yellow-tipped stick poked. Forty or  fifty years of age, brown frizzy hair, and going who knows where.

A new place opened on the corner of 18th and Collingsworth in the Castro. It's sign read, "El Capitan," a new burrito place where my old favorite, Zapata, used to be. Too bad the landlord wouldn't give Zapata more than a year's lease, causing them to close. My new go-to burrito place, before stay-at-home, is still open I discover. I don't even know its name, but it's across from the Safeway on Church Street and Market near 14th. An impulse told me to stop and patronize them but I checked it: unnecessary exposure is not in order.

Driving around the city was easy now most Ubers were off the street (and stay-at-home, of course). We are allowed to go out for essentials. Construction of a certain kind is deemed essential, and around my neighborhood the sound of sawing, slamming and whatever, have picked up. At Ceasar Chavez and Valencia, the huge old St. Luke's hospital, twenty floors?, is being demolished, a wonder to see: exposed rooms stripped of their walls, reminding me of buildings in Mexico City after the 1985 earthquake.

Some things are as usual: a guy in a wheelchair propelling himself with his feet at Church and Dolores. People are out and about but far from the typical numbers and not at the same time, I guess. Yeah, but those boarded shops aren't coming back soon, nor will the strutting peacocks, the clothes horses or the merely beautiful.