A Project of San Francisco Poet Laureate devorah major
Each month, the San Francisco Public Library Web site, www.sfpl.org, will feature selected poems reflecting the theme of War and Peace on Our Streets.
To submit a poem or for more information about the project, see our News Release.
October Adult Poet: Janet Weil
The Pelican, the Embarcadero, April 2003
Bleak morning in a cold April.
I stood on the streetcar platform, hacking,
throat raw from flu and unscreamed pain.
The Embarcadero a flat, slick stretch of asphalt.
Palm trees lashed, bending, in flurries of wind.
The sky a dark silver ceiling, the bay white-capped,
The bridge hemmed in by rain and mist.
I stood in raincoat and umbrella, on the way
to errands, taking an hour from sickbed and TV,
from images of tanks and explosions, fires and chaos:
Iraq with its screaming women, its palm trees.
I stood in the rain and watched the bay.
Sacred waters
known to me since childhood,
a blue stage laden with freighters and sails
lively in all winds and weathers
home to egrets, leopard sharks, and gulls
center of arrivals and departures
haven, refuge, place of beauty.
What I knew, was that
the water existed
to enclose me,
to draw me down,
that I could surrender
and be gone.
What I saw, was how
death waits, an open door,
a walk across the street.
I stood in the rain and stared at a point in the water's flutter,
its small peaked waves like agitated hands, motioning.
I stood and as I stared
(grayness, rain, whitecaps, void)
a pelican appeared,
its long beak pointed down,
its wingspan sharp-edged, wide.
It wheeled,
closed its wings,
struck water,
surfaced.
Tossed back a fish.
Took to the air
and turned and turned again.
All angles and instincts —
pulse of life in each quick move—
the pelican said to me:
Yes, death is an open door,
but you cannot enter it yet.
Live, and do what is given to you
as I do what is given to me.
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