Port of Oakland. Photo by Eugene Zelenko
Bart Transit poster by Owen Smith
Three cormorants
Three cranes
Three thousand Matson box cars
Three hundred riders on this Bart train
Oakland, tunnel, sliding beneath the earth.
Tired brain, hunched shoulders from too much computer, too much iPhone, too much texting, too much reading, too much writing.
All this makes me tick and smile and frown. I breathe in, think of the Grizzly Giant. Touch its ancient bark, hear its grumpy growling cough, smoke from the Rim reaches its roots and asks for a sacrifice, but the sequoia cannot oblige, though it might like to acquiesce.
Bike riders and helmeted men, mountain bikes, warm, sweaty people, 19th Street Oakland, playing a game next to me, a man, a grown man, playing on his phone. A woman closes her eyes, clears her throat, the train continues, an endless journey, to and fro, to and fro, in to tunnel, out of tunnel, into city by the bay, out of the bounds of Saint Francis.
The summer leaves us, the sun returns a little before the conclusion of this golden day and the cars point to Walnut Creek, Hayward, points east. The bars, horizontal honey photons soften our gazes, a glass of wine awaits, meals with spouses, children to visit, more mail to respond to, the week has just begun and four days remain in which to fit
Three cormorants
Three cranes
Three thousand Matson box cars
Goods arrive
Goods are shipped
Commerce, thinking, traveling, typing on this computer, in and out, back and forth, here we are, there we go, my mind, my heart,
my fingers creating this now
and for always
Owens River Girl 