This Wandering State

San Francisco has been fugitive for a while now. Everyone who comes here sees part of what they left somewhere else. It's what the 'west' has generally been used for: some imaginary blank slate. It's not blank and never was, but it's been used for that so definitions are always serving suggestions and not always useful. Those of us born here, resident in our formative years, or even of First Peoples, will see something else.

I haven't figured out how to midwife those understandings and I may never manage that leap.

Sitting at my kitchen table, staring at San Bruno Mountain in the fog, cat at the front door singing street cat poems, that's what San Francisco is for me at this very moment. When the fog burns off things will be different. Anthologies are as tricky as definitions. Is this a complete anthology of San Francisco poetry? No. There are no complete anthologies. I served San Francisco as her 7th Poet Laureate. I was born and grew up here. I love the place and the poetry. There is much in the way of poetry. This is some of it.

K. Shuck

2nd Late Summer of the Pandemic

in the Fog