San Francisco: A Sestina

Sadie R. Levine     2008
Cimarron Middle School, Douglas County
Sadie.levine@dcsdk12.org   

San Francisco: A Sestina
For Mark Overmeyer

Impossible architecture straddles each hillside.
Today, no fog appears on little cat feet.
Winding streets create relief in my heart: I didn’t learn to drive stick on these streets.
Chilled water licks my toes and the sandy shore.
In view, the sweet Golden Gate Bridge spanning the bay of gray water.
Calves and hamstrings strain as legs stride upward-

Always progressing upward.
My eyes move along, hillside to hillside-
Russian Hill, Nob Hill…. Victorian details, delicate like water-
Marks on stone.  Venders hock wares down sidewalks every three feet.
My eyes catch another one of your personas as a red lantern sways. Oh, beautiful city on the shore.
More than visual beauty, a feeling, a spirit, glides next to me down your streets.

Oakland’s port calls,” hey look at me,” but all streets
And roads lead to the city perched on upward
Slopes.   Alcatraz’s light, “The Rock,” holding onto secrets best forgotten, winks back to shore.
Shoes, bus, and a cable car slowly strain up each hillside.
One brave cyclist ventures away from the wharf but, alas, too steep, only makes it a few feet.
The water

Pulls gently like a mother. The water
Calls to her children playing in the streets,
Come home.  Feet
Move upward
To City Lights Books.  In front, Kerouac’s name sits watch in the sidewalk of a beatnik’s hillside
Haven.  Haight-Ashbury is not far from the Pacific’s shore.

 A  Shore,
On three sides surrounds a city of writers. Poets who seep into your heart like water
Rolls down Lombard Street- the crookedest path down any hillside.
Free to love whomever you choose, “summer of love,” Beat generation, shameful internment, earthquake, fire, and gold rush.  These streets,
These streets have witnessed all this and continue to move upward.
They progress like new ideas and my feet-

But only a few feet.
The cool shore
Calls to me from my heated upward
Post. The curving necks of hills meet the bay’s mouth in a saltwater
Kiss. My path moves downward and streets
Whisper to each hillside.

 Hillside, we have moved her feet
Down our streets and along our shore.
We lapped water across her toes.   Do you think when she dreams of us will she remember to always climb, progress upward?