01 2017 poetry marathon<\/p>\n
August 5, 2017, morning dawns in Oakland
\nby Paul Robert Sanford<\/p>\n
The lights are coming on in the tall buildings.
\nA few cars rush past on their way to wherever people go at dawn.
\nOne dark charcoal colored SUV leads the way turning left onto 17th
\nheaded for the cluster of tall buildings.
\nRed lights blink on the twin towers of the Federal Building.<\/p>\n
Chill air drifts in the open window,
\nwhispering pasts my bare legs.
\nMoist inside my heavy coat
\nI watch the dawn slip in,
\nthe rheostat turned ups slowly
\nas the dark of night does its warm up exercises
\nfor the blazing heat of noon.<\/p>\n
The earliest buses blunder past
\non their way to meet people starting their day.
\nA truck crosses an overpass at 14th street.
\nThe gray web of sleep lifts from both the city
\nand my senses, but so slowly, so slowly.<\/p>\n
Lights are on in the Federal Building now
\nscattered across its warm sandstone facade.
\nIn DC it the work day started minutes ago
\nour government at work making conference calls
\nsending and acknowledging faxes,
\nkicking off the West Coast in the middle of the sleeping city.<\/p>\n
Still no lights in any of the houses I can see.
\nStrange that there would be more bustle at midnight than at dawn
\nhere on the edge of Uptown,
\nthe crossing place between residential and the hard cold streets
\nwhere, on the other side of I980
\n the Greyh(o)und (B)US terminal shows its wounded sign
\nand the security guards wake the sidewalk sleepers.
\nOld highways converge at complex angles,
\nand tucked away are coffee shops and old dive bars,
\ntrendy brave new little restaurants and refurbished clubs.
\nNew construction of classy apartments with balconies,
\nmaybe some condos, although those are usually upgrades of old apartments.<\/p>\n
The olive drab jagged outlines of the conifers across Brush street
\nmark a line of nature fighting for its space in the city,
\nblending with the soft gray of the blurry sky.
\nAs the second cement truck of the day rumbles past,
\nswirling its slurried load,
\nthe broadleaf trees shine out with lighter colors against the conifers.
\nThe growing light rounds out the shape of the evergreens.
\nThe ivy at its foot is a ripple of shadow and color.<\/p>\n
Across the freeway the trashy apartment building
\nproudly shows its gigantic graffiti letters
\na short row of gabled vintage houses watches the mean streets over there
\none is getting an upgrade as the pockets of poverty gentrify.
\nBut still there are no lights in their windows
\nor in the windows of my neighbors across the street.<\/p>\n
The traffic light is green for the cars that go rolling down brush.
\nA red hand stops pedestrians who have not been savvy enough
\nto push the button.
\nNobody is walking on the sidewalk.
\nThe liquor stores are closed,
\nthe recycling centers have not opened.
\nThe light changes and an elderly sedan growls awake on 18th
\nand mutters through the intersection.<\/p>\n
They gray city poises and stretches,
\npreparing for the 2000 cars that will pass my house at rush hour,
\nstopping to growl and fret and check the time
\nwhen the light turns red,
\nthe flow of traffic so thick nobody can get up to speed.
\nFor now, even the single cars roll quietly past
\nheaded somewhere to turn on the lights.<\/p>\n
The daylight on the federal building has softly grown
\nto the point that I can no longer tell which windows are lit
\nand which are dark, because the contrast of dark and light has switched.<\/p>\n
A fruit fly ambles about in the air around my face,
\nmy legs are chilled, feet cold,
\na ring of sweat forms under my thick heavy coat collar.
\nI taste the stale coffee in my mouth.
\nTime to dress and perform my morning ablutions,
\nstart my own day.
\nMy neighbors will have to wake up without my supervision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
01 2017 poetry marathon August 5, 2017, morning dawns in Oakland by Paul Robert Sanford The lights are coming on in the tall buildings. A few cars rush past on their way to wherever people go at dawn. One dark charcoal colored SUV leads the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":736,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/736"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32110,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32095\/revisions\/32110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}