CALIFORNIA  POETS

Vince Storti, Berkeley

The Strand

Here: what unhinges

a necklace’s clasp, the

ornamental value a bauble

carried over the years, something

for another day, something

another might toss away.

The stone of it, now chipped

the strange appeal of it

somewhat tarnished

almost out of style

though once traded

for glass, and

lightly worn

sometimes shining

in the sunshine, and

(and almost forgotten in the rush)

out the door, toward peril.

I caught sight of it only for an instant:

a lyrical moment, a gesture, a fragment

of time not easily tossed away.

And yet, the memory of it

Something like a great quest

the quiet stones of it spaced

on a fragile string, and

catching the light

even as it was

broken.

Copyright 2015 by Vince Storti, Berkeley

(on reading from Merrill’s, Nights and Days:

“The Thousand and Second Night” pp 12-14.

Berkeley Memories

We have memories

like distant mirrors, reflections

that follow us for years.

The things we ate

the beverages we  drank

the hours spent around

candle-lit tables.

Memories of restaurants, clubs

houses recalling various visits; poems

read and recalled and read again.

I recollect an afternoon at Bateau Ivre.

Like a tourist, I say to the barista

in the café that I had a sandwich

here, a long time ago.

It was great, I say

it was huge.

She asked me what the sandwich was

and I said I couldn’t remember.

A few minutes later, heading toward

the street, I called out:

she heard me over her shoulder—

It was a BLT—I said

it was a club sandwich, I added.

She turned with a smile and replied—

“Yes!”

with a face that said

she took the memory of it and stored it

just before I headed out the door.

Copyright 2015 by Vince Storti, Berkeley

The Memorial Salon

1.

Here—

a salon of sorts

at a church in Berkeley

gathers a crowd of

bravely gay and sad faces.

And, looking around

I see Berkeley has changed—

it’s gotten slightly older.

2.

On the street, after the gathering

I pass new shops just opened and

not so many homeless with a feeling

that I want to live here again, though

not the same way I did when I was young.

3.

After the reading, the memory of that dinner

lingering: the chats and how everyone was

charming, saying the nicest things (with meaning)

and no one mentioning the football games being played

and no one mentioning        his death.

Copyright 2015 by Vince Storti, Berkeley

Judith Yamamoto,

San Francisco

Judith Yamamoto was recently one of three poets to represent District 5 in San Francisco's city-wide celebration of poetry sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and Friends' Poet in Residence Jack Hirschman.

Northern California Vineyard at Year’s End

Rows of branches circle the hillsides,

their few leaves splitting winter’s light.

Sorrow hangs as small bees
            hang at the edges of yellow.

We could sit here all afternoon,

sidestepping madness, the wind rising in the east

            and coming a long way over the wetlands.

From this vineyard of yellow leaves,     

the parts separating from their values,

we can see the same shadows, angular
            on city sidewalks.

The same slow winds

drag over pavement, stop at walls.

At ten in the morning, someone lies on a sidewalk,
covered in the threads of weavers

            asleep in a hillside village. Only the soles of these shoes

are visible, toes turned inward from the street,
            losing whatever coherence once haunted the old legends.

 We pass by, not knowing who it is, man or woman.

We pass by, and later,

in wayward corridors, likenesses tap at the glass.

They hang at the edges of being, wanting to know
who among us
            has lost his soul.

Copyright 2015 by Judith Yamamoto, San Francisco



This Year, in Asia Minor

This year, in Asia Minor, in an inland sea,      

            the water rises.

A woman goes on taking what she can carry,

flight beginning on a night

without moonlight. Rain, uncertain, and the distortion
            of that last tree.

The Black Sea fills.

Luck hangs on the fall of a veil, a woman turned away
or allowed to go on,
a child hidden. The hour irregular,
unsteady in the low call of darkness.

At those checkpoints where we wait,

there is always a risk,

our disguises falling into disbelief.

The passage to the Aegean Sea opens.

A woman walks now in the shadows
of the oldest stone beasts.

A U.S. destroyer deploys from Norfolk.

We cannot separate all of these parts;
            we cannot make them come together.

We no longer know

who we were.

Copyright 2015 by Judith Yamamoto, San Francisco

Tonight, Candles

Tonight, candles spark the hill. Below marigolds
            overtaken by the long loop of descent

the graves hold all that is left, a guitar
strummed into solitude, a drunken song.

If we stop here, empty-handed
a man will beg us to sit. He will begin a long story
that we will hardly understand. We must consider
his mother, so young, hair down to her waist. Ah!

It is a night of wind
that blows, he says, from the highest heaven.

In the trees, he says,
            they are weeping – can you hear them?

Or is it the man, weeping?  We must consider this mother,

every morning,

slicing the bread, setting the bowls on the little table.

And this man, listening          
            to the weeping of the trees.

Copyright 2015 by Judith Yamamoto, San Francisco

Judith Yamamoto is the author of At My Table.