Selections from the Monterey Bay poet and jazz musician.
Snowy Egret Cove
Two snowy egrets:
side by side, on a submerged
rock; they perch upon
two pinnacles that emerge
above water. These birds love
one another, but
side by side, they do not touch,
although they are so
much in love they seem to touch
the full length of their bodies.
You and I are these
two birds, side by side, in love
the full length of our
bodies: pinnacles, emerged,
and a rock beneath water.
The View from Here
Sitting at what I call Snowy Egret Cove
in Pacific Grove, not far from Lover’s Point,
I look across the Bay to Santa Cruz.
It’s “Snowy Egret Cove” because I once saw
two such birds perched on adjacent rocks
here, not holding hands (which they
don’t have), but in loving proximity.
I was once in love with you, Santa Cruz
but I’m not sure that you ever knew that,
or just how much. I never learned the names
of favorite streets or those of your
indigenous critters and flora and fauna—but O,
to hear Willie Nelson at the Catalyst!
And those two
years I spent nearly every single Monday night,
living, listening, at Kuumbwa Jazz Center
(when I wrote reviews for a paper here); then
attending weddings (Mort and Donna’s),
making hot sweet music with Jim Houston,
singing my own and Bulat Okudzhava’s
songs (in Russian—just for you!) with Marat
and Sasha at Louden Nelson; reading
Some Grand Dust at Bookshop Santa Cruz,
many other poems at Sweet Williams at Night,
Zachary’s, on Mort’s KUSP Poetry Show,
at your Art Center, and even the Rio Theatre.
I can still see my friend Zapata’s chuck wagon
lemonade stand across from the Boardwalk;
your somewhat small and dingy bus station
and the exotic residents who got on when I,
arriving, got off the bus. Cymbeline Records!
Logo’s. Lulu Carpenters. The original Cooper House.
Playing jazz piano at MHCAN (Mental Health
Client Action Network). And so many grand
places at which to eat: Vasili’s, Rosie McCann’s,
Chinese Schezwan, Shadowbrook.
Was it good for you too,
Santa Cruz? It was for me! But all things change
(and as George Santayana said, when they do, it’s
more than likely high time they did so). A new era,
a new order, a new aura—and you may have
set me aside, forgotten me (“She doesn’t phone,
she doesn’t write!”), but that’s OK.
Looking now across the Bay, I still keep
your picture in a frame, and always hope to.
“Den peirazei,” the Greeks say (“It doesn’t matter!”)
and when I lived in that Great Good Place
for a year, my landlady, who’d never set foot
off the island of Paros, asked—when I planned
to go to Naxos, just five miles, in sight, across
the waters—“Yiati? [Why?]; the olives
are no good there, the retsina is awful, and the people
are all thieves.” So I went, and none of that
proved true.
Now, looking with longing, at you,
Santa Cruz, just twenty-some miles across these waters,
and loving you in wonder still (your many
manifestations), I realize I may be less agile, now,
less mobile than I was when you truly cared for me,
but if I’m a bit older, well then, so are you!
Doesn’t
all this aging strike you as largely hilarious anyway,
“not for sissies”—as Bette Davis is said to have said?
I can dig the change in some ways–the detachment
it brings, perhaps—but when I sing “Don’t Get
Around Much Anymore,” I sing that song
most certainly for you.
Just for you, Santa Cruz,
where all the people are poets, the wine
and the olives taste good, and love goes on
and on and on. Yes, Santa Cruz—from just across
the Bay—I’m still in love with you.
William Minor his published six books of poetry, the latest Some Grand Dust (Chatoyant Press, 2002, a finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award), and three nonfiction books on music–the latest Jazz Journeys to Japan: The Heart Within (University of Michigan Press, 2004). He has recently completed The Inherited Heart, a memoir. A professional musician since the age of 16, he has released two spoken word/original music CDs: Bill Minor & Friends and Mortality Suite. Commissioned by the Historic Sandusky Foundation to write a suite of original music to accompany a married couple’s exchange of letters throughout the Civil War, he has also recorded a CD called Love Letters of Lynchburg. His website is www.bminor.org.
Local Poets, Local Inspiration, edited by Robert Sward, appears weekly online and monthly in Santa Cruz Weekly. Selections are by invitation.
