At 55 I’m a little hippie in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s waiting room,
City Lights, where electricians repair some sort of wiring
on the stair, of all places, leading to the poetry.
The hammering is unexpected but not out of place,
faces of Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac and others
staring from underneath their covers as charged as ever
and maybe even as electrified as Blake or Whitman.
I might have thought of eyes watching me but I was
watching them, conceitedly watching the little alcove-
hallway, and the door behind which they told me
the old man still keeps hours, thinking maybe I’ll
get a signed copy in the Coney Island of my mind.
The pounding of the hammers, drilling of the drills,
life support for poets in the marketplace of North Beach
where whole hogs hang in open doorways, hungry poets howl.
My conceit continues as they watch me for what I’ll do next,
so I get up and read a love poem to an audience of its object.
Tom Todaro
13 April 2005
City Lights Books, San Francisco
