Smoke curls upward and drifts past
clouded windows, blends with misty
morning light and mutes Telegraph
Avenue into a blur of
passing cars, trucks, bicycles, people,
color on color, softly etched.
I write alone at a grey marble
table in a cafe, drinking
a cappucino and eating
a warm bagel and cream cheese.
Black poppy seeds drop and scatter
upon fallen cigarette ash.
Outside, excited sparrows trill
and chirp a loud warning of an
advancing storm and the fichus trees
drop hard seeds, like pebbles and rocks,
which ding off glass cases
and slide into cement cracks.
Tour busses arrive promptly at
noon and park double deep along
Bancroft Way. Montana ranchers,
students from South Carolina,
French tourists, businessmen from Japan,
lured by old Berkeley tales.
Throughout the day a thousand hands
layer walls and poles with brightly
colored leaflets announcing
the new day's important events,
dance, benefit, demonstration,
each quickly covering the last.
Food wrappers, throwaways, street trash
collect along the curb and bunch
together in the gutter, catch
on a stormy wind gust, hover
above the trees and glide toward
the swish, swish, of street cleaner's broom.
Sweeping across Sproul Plaza, sounds
of the cleaner's broom syncopate
with deep droning Krishna chanters,
mix briefly with African drums,
impel the preacher's tambourine
and sad sax screams from the corner.
Crafts-people offer bits of their
color dyed and bejeweled world
to the on-rush of fast moving
cars and curious tourists who
slip, slide, squeeze in all directions,
upstream and downstream.
Waves of cars advance,
boom and blast their way past
butterfly painted face,
hair bleached yellow,
tipped, dyed black, spiked.
A magical wish-granting man,
flamingo pink and cobalt blue,
leads a fast Mambo through grid-locked
five o'clock traffic, spins under
mylar streamers, dips seven times
and sanctifies forgotten dreams.
An exhausted, street-spent messiah
finds a place with Krishna chanters
and beautiful, bearded Joey,
tosses his straw hat in the air
and prostrates himself under a
metallic shower of beer cans.
From sunken avenue doorways
America's forgotten ones,
America's unseen ones, beg
for spare change, to eat, to drink, to
stick in their veins.
It's night and grey smoke curls and
is lost in shadow, dark brown stains
dry along the rim of my cup,
Telegraph bustles in the darkness,
And I remain too long in
cafe smoke writing poems on cold marble.
