Open Poem to Lawrence Ferlinghetti from the Urban Forester
Despite our best efforts
Arbor Day is the least embraced of San Francisco’s events
People here just don’t find it sexy enough
Celebrated in America 100 years before the first Earth Day
And the Summer of Love
What if you celebrated the Human Be-In every year
And no hipsters showed up?
They are burning the man
Or at pre- and post-compression parties I guess
We revived Arbor Day here in 2005
Signature tree planting honors local and Int’l greats
Cork oak for Rosa Parks on Van Ness
Coast live oak for Nelson Mandela in the Western Addition
And for Espanola Jackson of Hunters Point on Evans,
Charlie Starbuck got a tree on Geary,
Still volunteers planting trees for Friends of the Urban Forest
Every Saturday since 1981
Using public transit & arriving early each week
Trees in the ground before most of the City wakes
Not all those honored are buried first
Who is the most important San Franciscan still living
In the mind of the Urban Forester?
In the mind of America?
In the Coney Island of the Mind,
A Far Rockaway of the Heart?
Who began selling paperbacks & pocket books
In a small storefront on Columbus
And soon put this coastal town on the Int’l map
Put the best coast on the Left Coast
Who overtook the discovery of gold
By panning for free speech
Protecting freedom of expression in the whole
The most valuable element in free society
What are the qualifications to be the Urban Forester
In the City of St. Francis?
Is it plant biology or environmental policy?
Or an undergrad degree in English
With a passion for literature?
How do you speak San Francisco to San Franciscans?
Not with the Latin names for trees
Not always with facts & figures
Not when most want more sun, less shade & more views
The urban forester needs to speak San Francisco
Starting out, I too made a move from NYC’s Lower Inside
The pocket bookshop on Columbus
The right person at the right time at the right place in USA
Bop prosody & a need to publish the new vision
The summer of love got started way before ‘67
Started the moment the last Great War flashed out
When Snyder read “A Berry Feast” at the Six Gallery
And Allen’s Howl was heard across the globe
Other things happened there too:
I greet you at the beginning of a great career
We’ve crossed paths a few times
First was a four-way stop in North Beach
Yielded to your well-worn red pick-up truck
My mouth agape
A few years later,
Entered the bookshop
Friday morning after Thanksgiving,
Stepped through the doorway head bowed
While an older gentleman glided out
From the magazines at the front window
I did a double take:
Just shared the threshold of history with the founder & publisher himself
Considered myself blessed & anointed
Resisted the urge to follow you
Among your fellow gray panthers and cougars
Went upstairs instead, to my Gary Snyder section
And took a seat in the Poet’s chair
Poetry as Insurgent Art was our next shared space
A rare reading in the bookshop, like Ginsberg & Cassady in the 50’s
Brought my disabled mother-in-law
Couldn’t even get inside before she asked staff for a bathroom
But silver-haired & walker opens hearts and gets special treatment
I parked the car in Chinatown
Stopped my grumbling when I found her in the front row
With an extra seat for me
Major cameras in the balcony
This could be your last public reading in City Lights
Told her she may not live to see it
But someday we’ll both be captured
Together, in photo or film
A few years later, the documentary is released
Directed by Christopher Felver
A rebirth of wonder
And there we are, front row, in the Ferlinghetti trailer
Sallie still alive then, to watch it
After the reading,
Looking like a former lover
Sallie cut the line, walker at the prow
She wouldn’t stop shaking your hand
Your blue eyes and blue shirt,
“Your eyes are so blue” she keeps repeating
Double pumping your hand,
Her blue scarf, your shining diamond sutra
She asked you to do readings more often
Signed a copy for her son-in-law,
While I snapped photos from across the room
Future City Arborist — Urban Forester of San Francisco
We demonize tech
Blame them for everything
The cost of living
St. Francis would not approve of this witch hunt
Don’t they know that the Bay Area
Is the center of the free thinking world?
Better to blame the Miwok
Lewis & Clark
The Gold Rush 49ers
Jack London & Mark Twain
Emperor Norton
The Golden Gate & Bay Bridges
The pocket bookshop
The beatniks and Herb Caen
The great San Francisco poetry & jazz renaissance
Coffee
The gathering of the tribes
The Summer of Love & music scene
The hippies that followed
Land conservation
The preservation of vast amounts of open space
To the north, east and south
Harvey Milk & the Castro
Dykes on Bikes
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
Berkeley
Bill Walsh, Joe Montana & Jerry Rice
The redwoods
Bluegum eucalyptus
Early custom mountain bikes
Circumambulating Mt. Tam in the 1970s
Alcatraz
Bolinas
Zen
Nudists
Dave Eggers & McSweeney’s
Yoga
Rice a roni
Alice Waters and the foodies
The chime of the cable cars
The Parrots of Telegraph Hill — which are actually kind of loud
And now live behind me in the Bavyiew
You can eliminate all tech
But San Francisco will retain
The highest rents in the land
Still imperfect
Still the last great hope at the final shore
At the end of the new world
Arbor Day
Not all those honored are buried first
Who is the most important San Franciscan still living
In the mind of the Urban Forester?
In the mind of America?
Ten years ago
I woke in tears from a nightmare:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was dead
I was walking down mid-Market
Tears streaming down my face
The most important living San Franciscan
Hero of Freedom of Speech
Owner Founder Publisher Writer Painter Icon
The most important building in the City and America
Mecca for all English majors and the other great thinkers
Loss, washing over me in sobs
The right person at the right time at the right place in USA
The City not the same City without him
Fell in love with trees my final semester
While reading Walden line by line
Like all former high school jocks
I also adored Kerouac
Showed me how to reinvent myself
An Uncle also recommended
Snyder/Ferlinghetti/Whalen/Ginsberg
In a post card
Took Snyder’s “Real Work” to heart
Stuffed the chipper with my English degree
Climbed myself up through the ranks
Feel the weight of the wood, think global, act local
Dragged brush bundled in tarps
Through living rooms in Pacific Heights
Still desire to write the Next Great American Novel
Eventually,
Education Coordinator, Friends of the Urban Forest
Urban Forestry Inspector, City & County
Caring civilized civil servant
Now permanent Urban Forester
Of still the most forward thinking City in America
Working with others to manage
All the trees & plants in our sidewalks
What are the qualifications to be the Urban Forester of SF?
The urban forester needs to speak San Francisco
Undergrad degree in English
A passion for literature
The written word
The written world
San Franciscans smoke more trees than they plant
And some would prefer to park on their sidewalk
Than allow a tree to take that space
The best time to have planted a tree was 20 years ago
The next best time is now
We won’t all live forever
You can’t live forever
We keep honoring worthy folks
But can’t we honor you while still among us?
Who survived Normandy and San Francisco
Almost 98 but Rose edged you out this year in Chinatown
Can we go ahead and make a date of it, for 2018
Or should we Howl together at 100 in 2019?
Even if we never get a chance to plant that mythic tree
(in my mind) together
In joyful gratitude Mr. Ferlinghetti,
I promise to organize an annual pilgrimage:
Bloomsday Day-like celebration on March 24th
The day of your birth
From the Potrero Hill house to North Beach
And so many points between
To start at sunrise each year,
7:06 A.M across the street from 706 Wisconsin
Invite others to read your poetry
Or read their own about you and San Francisco
Dada will like a day like this
And the Giants shall recite
Your Baseball Canto
During the 7th inning stretch
You and I both know why there are no street trees
In front of the bookshop on Columbus
I nearly marked out some proposed planting locations anyway
Last November during the Dada conference, on your sidewalk
Just to create a stir
Already regret not acting on this Dada impulse:
Studied Dada with Professor Kuenzli, in Iowa City
Home of the International Dada Archive
In Iowa, of all places
In December I read in The New ‘Yick’ Times
We both believe our saddest memory
Is the 2016 Presidential election
But take heart, in the end,
As my daughter likes to point out
It is a forester who thwarts
The Big Bad Wolf
Thank you Sir, for all that you have given us
San Francisco’s first poet laureate
In that role, a fellow civil servant
The Urban Forester is grateful
That a local street bears your name
But it’s time now to receive the real token of our affection
A Tree to the City
Please, can my people talk to your people?
No, let me first speak San Francisco
And place this in the hands of poesy
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago
The second best time is now
I will meet you one day in my dreams
And every year
On March 24th,
On Ferlinghetti Day
**************************************************
Chris Buck
Urban Forester
San Francisco Public Works (for reference)
Written at my home near 3rd & Palou in Bayview Hunters Point
& in a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains
To honor the most important San Franciscan among us
As we approach another Arbor Day
March, 2017
