The Dream Bay

I am quietly certain
in a night's empty sound
that all that may
in its own way come to be
mine or yours or
anyone else's
may be found
or will one day
find an opening
and get its way
to me

And surely by
now the evening
bell has struck
if the sky has
turned brown
and the sun has
set black
and has
fallen into
the gray
and sunk
into the muck
for the dream
I had lost has suddenly
come back:

I fall the floating
spiral down
and sightless
see the moon
is cold
and know the way
somehow untold
to find a world
ungrown

Then running
unaware of night
unknown I pass
the line of day
to find a mist
the morning light
and touch
a clear blue bay

And if I said
I saw a face
in the wave
as I turned
in the dream's
own place
what sorrow tears
to have found
my way
with the sight
of the depths
of the bay

notebook (poem): circa 1964
**

The Year of The Chicken; or,
If You're Going to San Francisco
Be Sure To Wear Some Chicken Feathers
In Your Hair

As I looked out on the gorgeous
sunset over
the bay from our perch in the
Berkeley hills yesterday,
I remembered one of
my earliest poems,*The Dream Bay*
that I happened to have memorized.
I am attached to it, despite
the glaring influences of Blake,
Eliot, Housman, Gray, Poe,
Coleridge, and
other youthful favorites.
It's a joy to be here this
summer. Sorry to have missed
Jean Vengua, who seems to
have slipped away to Missouri.

The owner of the house has
added one responsibility this
year- the care of 6 chickens!
(I noticed the coincidental, recent
-synchronistic?-
encounter with a chicken referred
to on Katie D's {click here}
blog by the way.)
The chickens, who had been
given the run of the lower
part of the house, have
been placed in a pen in
the back yard. Our assignment
is to let them out of the
pen every day- so I guess
we are -"chicken sitting"-
replace their water and
straw, etc. This is more
fun then I expected. (Yet again
it was a relief to learn
that the rooster, afer some
local complaints, was recently
farmed out to a local suburban family.)
I noticed that the red
one kept running away from
the others, and Toni pointed out
it is the smallest. So I
gave it a little pep talk
(think big, don't let them
push you around,etc). Then it climbed
up on a log and stared down,
mightily, at the others.

Also, when Toni made dinner
she made you know what. When
she kept mentioning this in
front of our charges, I complained.
Doesn't she understand
chickens have feelings too?...
**

If you're in Oakland on
Sunday, hope to see you at
the Gala New Brutalist
Cabaret. For
details see the link on the
sidebar to your left.