Soaking + Intersection
The rain feels as if it should pass time but my shoe found aa puddle on the way into the airport. With a wet sock and sole through security into the liminal waiting lobbies, time is unbound from normal expectations, held only to the flashing time above the gate labeled letter number. My toe soaks. A mess of R names are called to have their passports checked. They check names and places but the question of time is always skipped. How long have you been here? When was the last time you ate? Do you know what day today is? Through my sock the bottom of my big toe begins to wrinkle against the uncleanable carpet. A wet toe is then traveling 350 miles per hour over mountain ranges and vineyards only to step out again into the maze of a different airport. Cold from the altitude, we are cursed to wander the labyrinth until the bold letters E-X-I-T call to us. Out and away onto the rainless sidewalk to dry on the vast concrete under the careful tick of the sun.
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My hotel is around the corner from a Jamba juice, an escape room, and a sex shop and I’ve never before felt infinite possibility.
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There is a little humility being in San Francisco writing poetry. How much cultural revolution and change, good and bad, was birthed from this little bay. Comparing the tourist to the tech company employee is almost pointless, everyone has a backpack. I’m on the second story of a Chipotle overlooking an intersection, Kearny and Sutter. What perspective 10 feet of elevation can give. I’ve order guac and have developed a god complex. Tiny ants of every color, following the flash of an orange hand, walk or do not walk. The sun sets above me. The lines of the street once traced with shadows of fire escapes are now muted. Shadows that created such dynamic with the five o’clock foot traffic just disappeared into the layered lines and edges of buildings built one on top of another. Paint books with one thousand shades of white cannot capture six o’clock compared to six-o-one at the end of September in San Francisco.
Both streets are one ways away from the corner on which I perch. Everyone headed somewhere. Every curb an accumulation of flashers from doorashers and ubers. Tumbling through the intersection, momentum momentum, a slight pause. A single moment when both lights are red. Like a field grouse, heads shoot up and start swiveling, making their guesses as to what happens next. Then the signs light up, green glow painted on the hoods for a moment. The accelerators kick in. The sun returns in finale, no longer looking only to make shadows but to paint the corners in a white orange, bold and staining the eyes of one side of the intersection. Will they see the light change? Do they know where they are going? Will the walkers cross into the shadow or wander onward into the bright until the sun sets and we are caught in the cool blue quiet of the night?
I’ve order guac and developed a god complex
from the corner of Kearny and Sutter
what just ten feet of perspective will grant you
both streets of the intersection one ways
away everyone moves, all at once, unrelenting
but for a brief moment, when both lights red
then the shadows stop, the five o’clock sun sending
lines of fire escapes over the white crosswalk paint
on every corner striped and confused walker’s heads
calculating what has happened, can they move?
lights go green, the white hoods of cars tinted
for just a second with the bleached green glow
then they are gone, follow the signs,
let lights direct you where
you’ve gone to only you know
one too many faces to keep track of