Our first, and it seemed all too early, especially when most of the summer had been cool. I walked into Bird and Beckett Books to a gathering before my reading with Bill Mercer and Peter Sherburn-Zimmer. There were old friends who were part of the “movable feast”, new faces who were introduced, and friends from other connections also appeared. Then Richard Beban, a wonderful Californian poet friend who has turned Parisian, stepped up and held me in his arms. Time and space collapsed in a most unexpected and exhilarating way and the night turned magical.
Richard comes back to the Bay Area for a friend who is in his last stage of life. At the reading we remembered Mel Clay, actor, playwright and poet, who passed away unexpectedly at the end of September; and Susie Birkeland, who had been “resurrected” by her friends reading her poetry at the Antwerp International Poetry Festival. I looked out to the audience as I read, grateful that once again we were together in body. At the open mike, poems ranged from an elegy to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass to the execution of Troy Davis. The rain had stopped when we made our way out of the bookstore. I forgot to pick up my umbrella.
