[y66]

San Francisco Remembered

by Philip Schultz

In summer the polleny light bounces off the white buildings
& you can see their spines & nerves & where the joints knot.
You've never seen such polleny light. The whole city shining
& the women wearing dresses so thin you could see their wing-tipped hips
& their tall silvery legs alone can knock your eye out.
But this isn't about women. It's about the city of blue waters
& fog so thick it wraps round your legs & leaves glistening trails
along the dark winding streets. Once I followed such a trail
& wound up beside this redheaded woman who looked up & smiled
& let me tell you you don't see smiles like that in Jersey City.
She was wearing a black raincoat with two hundred pockets
& I wanted to put my hands in each one. But forget about her.
I was talking about the fog which steps up & taps your shoulder
like a panhandler who wants bus fare to a joint called The Paradise
& where else could this happen? On Sundays Golden Gate Park
is filled with young girls strolling the transplanted palms
& imported rhododendron beds. You should see the sunset
in their eyes & the sway, the proud sway of their young shoulders.
Believe me, it takes a day or two to recover. Or the trolleys clanking
down the steep hills—why you see legs flashing like mirrors!
Please, Lord, please let me talk about San Francisco. How
that gorilla of a bridge twists in the ocean wind & the earth
turns under your feet & at any moment the whole works can crack
& slip back into the sea like a giant being kicked off his raft
& now, if it's all right, I would like to talk about women…

from The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems. © Houghton Mifflin, 2010. Reprinted with permission at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

[luke warm]

well that was about a minute and a half of my life i'll never get back

[Al_U_Card]

luke warm, on Apr 14 2010, 12:16 PM, said:

well that was about a minute and a half of my life i'll never get back

Makes me glad that I only wasted 10 seconds reading your response...

[Phil]

Love it. And it took me more than 90 seconds to read it.

Keep em coming.

[PassedOut]

Phil, on Apr 14 2010, 01:12 PM, said:

Love it. And it took me more than 90 seconds to read it.

Keep em coming.

Agree completely.

[Al_U_Card]

PassedOut, on Apr 14 2010, 01:52 PM, said:

Phil, on Apr 14 2010, 01:12 PM, said:

Love it. And it took me more than 90 seconds to read it.

Keep em coming.

Agree completely.

Jimmy speedreads, maybe?

[JoAnneM]

Wonderful! I was just there Sunday, and every chance I get.

[luke warm]

Al_U_Card, on Apr 14 2010, 01:53 PM, said:

PassedOut, on Apr 14 2010, 01:52 PM, said:

Phil, on Apr 14 2010, 01:12 PM, said:

Love it. And it took me more than 90 seconds to read it.

Keep em coming.

Agree completely.

Jimmy speedreads, maybe?

not fast enough

[Echognome]

It's a cool poem, but I think it's kind of ironic that this is a poem about beautiful women in San Francisco. I didn't think San Francisco was known for that at all. Maybe it's just a poem about a dirty old man in San Francisco?

[Al_U_Card]

Echognome, on Apr 14 2010, 04:00 PM, said:

It's a cool poem, but I think it's kind of ironic that this is a poem about beautiful women in San Francisco. I didn't think San Francisco was known for that at all. Maybe it's just a poem about a dirty old man in San Francisco?

Shrouded in fog so possibly wearing a raincoat.....

[kenberg]

I have various connections with SF. I have an ex-wife living not far from Fisherman's Wharf. My current (and final) wife grew up not far from Haight Ashbury. A son-in law is from Santa Rosa, not so far away.

We were there for a while in January, me mostly busy at teh annual Math meetings, my wife enjoying the nostalgia. I was pleased to take her to the City Lights, which had eluded her (I think her parents kept her on a pretty short leash approaching the Summer of Love).

Still, my enthusiasm really is for the Bay Area as a whole. I spent a few months in Berkeley and spent far more time biking the surrounding hills than roaming the streets of SF. No doubt it is an interesting city.

And with all that walking, nobody's getting fat except Mama Cass.

[jjbrr]

sitting on a park bench......

[luke warm]

jjbrr, on Apr 15 2010, 10:09 AM, said:

sitting on a park bench......

jethro?

[jjbrr]

luke warm, on Apr 15 2010, 03:53 PM, said:

jjbrr, on Apr 15 2010, 10:09 AM, said:

sitting on a park bench......

jethro?

eyeing little girls with bad intent

[Winstonm]

Hookers - the REAL San Francisco treat.

[luke warm]

jjbrr, on Apr 15 2010, 05:27 PM, said:

luke warm, on Apr 15 2010, 03:53 PM, said:

jjbrr, on Apr 15 2010, 10:09 AM, said:

sitting on a park bench......

jethro?

eyeing little girls with bad intent

snot running down his nose