Peenie Wallie

I hear the parrots but cannot see them
Now at the base of Telegraph Hill
Tires screeching and kids parading into school
Styrafoam cups and people in jackets huddled round the Levi fountain

The working class is working
Mowing, weed-eating, tending to perfect pots of Impatiens
Now the Embarcadero and cycles and buses and a guy on a motorized skateboard
A plaque showing buried ships from the Gold Rush
Buried beneath our feet, they once served as floating warehouses.
And when they needed more land they became landfill

A girl lets her dog approach me but pulls him back in
She's fishing for men but her face is a foul bait
At now, at last, the Parrots of Telegraph Hill!
I hear two flying along the Embarcadero above the trees
wings beating fast I spy them as they pass

Abandoned trolley tracks on Grant and Green filled with cement
On Broadway rumbling trucks and people on skateboards
Fresh wet sidewalks marred by mumbling homeless
Jackson Square and Georgia O'Keeffe with a bolt through her face
A Chinese woman opens a Taro leaf wrapped in cotton string
and eats something delicious
but not a word of English rolls down her face

A garbage train rolls down Jackson Square spilling cardboards into the streets.
A golf cart pulling a chain of rolling dumpsters
Leaking produce trucks and Tommy Lifts
Tall leather boots, a short skirt, and a cigarette

As the buildings get taller the pace picks up
People walk faster, they dress nicer, and a man comes by with a lock-box on a dolly
A key on a curly tether opens each parking meter, removes a cylinder of coins,
dumps it into his lock box, replaces the cylinder and goes to the next meter