Poetry and the City: Mere Tangents on San Francisco Living
(published in "Listen & Be Heard" Weekly / March 2005)
© 2005 Annabelle A. Udo
By day—the streets of the City are dry and the sound of my footsteps are as hoarse as an old man’s cough. The Chevron gas station across the street is a 24-hour diner serving $2.29/gallon unleaded gasoline to an endless flow of hungry vehicles.
The movement of life in San Francisco reeks with poetry—its signature fog swirls in a melancholy dance at the edge of Ocean Beach while the sun filters through a pensive overcast in the Mission District. Early risers sit concentrated and still in coffeehouses like mannequins in a storefront window while feral cats escape human contact and scurry through secret passageways in the thickets of Golden Gate Park.
Every season is the Summer of Love here in a city that dreams while it is awake. It’s a town that sweats with an identity that can only be described in poetic fashion. Every step of San Francisco’s geography contains the energy of its ancestors—of those who have stood here before me—of elders in this community whose young love remains alive in sepia-toned innocence—of stories that seem sad only because life today is so complex, while back then it seemed slow and endless—as if people made love with Time—as if it was all about sitting in a colorful world around black and white TV.
By night, the distant horizon is the setting of businesses turning off their lights and calling it a day, hopping on the MUNI, unrolling the yoga mat, and rolling a joint. It’s all in a day’s work here in this city that writes its own story everyday. San Francisco is a one-stop wonder where other worlds exist still waiting to be born in the ink of a writer’s veins or the breath of air beneath the step of a dancer’s foot.
When I first arrived here in there early ‘80s, the tone of San Francisco was like that feeling you get when you hear the first note of a new song that becomes your favorite. The sentiment of the City remains my beloved tune and I continue to walk along its golden timeline. Each time I cross over the Bay Bridge and see the shadow of the skyline from afar, I remind myself that I am part of this postcard beauty—rich with history, culture, art, architecture, music, and poetry.
© 2005 Annabelle A. Udo
By day—the streets of the City are dry and the sound of my footsteps are as hoarse as an old man’s cough. The Chevron gas station across the street is a 24-hour diner serving $2.29/gallon unleaded gasoline to an endless flow of hungry vehicles.
The movement of life in San Francisco reeks with poetry—its signature fog swirls in a melancholy dance at the edge of Ocean Beach while the sun filters through a pensive overcast in the Mission District. Early risers sit concentrated and still in coffeehouses like mannequins in a storefront window while feral cats escape human contact and scurry through secret passageways in the thickets of Golden Gate Park.
Every season is the Summer of Love here in a city that dreams while it is awake. It’s a town that sweats with an identity that can only be described in poetic fashion. Every step of San Francisco’s geography contains the energy of its ancestors—of those who have stood here before me—of elders in this community whose young love remains alive in sepia-toned innocence—of stories that seem sad only because life today is so complex, while back then it seemed slow and endless—as if people made love with Time—as if it was all about sitting in a colorful world around black and white TV.
By night, the distant horizon is the setting of businesses turning off their lights and calling it a day, hopping on the MUNI, unrolling the yoga mat, and rolling a joint. It’s all in a day’s work here in this city that writes its own story everyday. San Francisco is a one-stop wonder where other worlds exist still waiting to be born in the ink of a writer’s veins or the breath of air beneath the step of a dancer’s foot.
When I first arrived here in there early ‘80s, the tone of San Francisco was like that feeling you get when you hear the first note of a new song that becomes your favorite. The sentiment of the City remains my beloved tune and I continue to walk along its golden timeline. Each time I cross over the Bay Bridge and see the shadow of the skyline from afar, I remind myself that I am part of this postcard beauty—rich with history, culture, art, architecture, music, and poetry.
posted by Filipina Veritas at 7:57 PM
