San Francisco Touch
The present rubbed against the emery of yesterday’s hours
Slipping from the sun into a mesh of empty past,
Like salt upon a broken blade of grass
Is washed against the wet stones of a returning tide,
Polished, stained, reborn-
As is the lingering connection from a mother’s womb
That slowly recedes as the infant becomes a child,
The changing moment, pressing the juice of time,
Flowing against parched lips:
Drink with unquenchable thirst
And absorb with sponge-like quality.
Yesterday a knife through the neck of a man,
Flung to the graffiti splattered wall with a cry of innocence
And the desperate hand that pressed against the wound
And through its fingers the arteries spurting red
And the gathering crowd, and an ambulance siren on the wind-
Live on city of many worlds.
Through the shade and sunlit streets,
Past the the blooming flowers bow,
Through the stately red
The looming steel,
The projection of our feeble victories ,
The stillness found in the teeming city
When the clattering rest subsides
And with closed eyes the sensation only
Of the pink sun and the stray breeze off the bay.
Come soul lift me in this hour
Burn my identity into this brimming moment.
Then only come the afterthoughts of sound
The swaying body's arch
Framed against the scattering beams of light,
The questions that pervade us all
Of here and innocence
Of the reflection of the Oakland bridge
Lapping softly against the eaten pier
Like a lost chance at love,
Of the Sequoia that stretch their earthbound
Trunks toward infinity,
Of the strange Elyse on the gyre
Of mountain roads
Pausing to share her car,
Carrying humanity in an easy gesture.
