Sunrise over San Francisco
Summer of 1967
The sidewalks steaming
in front of store fronts
doorways jingling
delivery boys mumbling
I’m on the road
like in the novel
Though I did not know that then
That morning will never happen
again
That smell of weed and leather
which poured from the inside
of the beetle
has long since sailed
across the Bay
maybe all the way
back to China
and I
am no longer
on the road
but planted firmly
in the here and now
which is after all what
the gurus said we should be doing
One foot in front of the other
all night on the edges of the highway
thumb in the air sometimes
sometimes simply walking
I caught a ride
and settled deep inside
where heads bobbed
and faces smiled
groovey
they said
far owt man
she said
and passed me a fat joint
and as the sun rose
like a flower in all of our hair
we cruised into the Haight
and I emerged into the light
light headed
and born again
to the smells and sights
never seen before
a scene before the bewildered masses
long haired boys
and beautiful beflowered girls
were gathering together
along with yours truly
to experience for once
together
a certain quality of life
which rarely comes by
like a butterfly
which if stepped upon
will kill off the dinosaurs
and introduce the planet
to mammals and such
but Darwin never said
“it’ll happen overnight…”
and he was right
because there we were
bewildered ourselves
at the sight and sounds and smells
of a sunrise over a city
to which I’d never been
until that instant
and the sidewalks smelled fresh
freshly washed and scrubbed
(they wash the sidewalks here!)
and the colors of the people
and the colors of the clothes they wore
and the colors on the posters
of the colorful houses
featured in the colorful folk songs
about houses and people
on the sides of hills
like me
walking up that hill
towards the big beautiful gates
which opened up
to the Garden and
Introduced me to the
concept
of life everlasting
with fish and chips
and patchouli oil and beads
and
sitting on a park bench
in an instant in time
a young man from Glendale Arizona
wondered at the wonder
of that morning
as the sun rose
like a rose
in a Garden somewhere
and the scent
of the petals
which might have been
that flower child
who passed out
flyers
to diggers
and freaks
about a free concert with free food
and I was free
so I went
and over Time and Distance
I find the road
and cling to the center line
while steering with one hand
as the other hand
waves the rest of them ahead
why wait for me?
I’m somewhere
back here
back in 1967
when the sidewalks steamed
and the sound of my sneakers
seemed somehow musical
in the hot town of that summer
I didn’t have a flower
in my hair
so I let a young blond
flower child
paint one on my sneakers
and I danced
through the Gates
into the Garden
with flowers on my toes
and a rising sun in my sight.
Fred Brighton July 2021