"Bravo for your poem, Caro Chris. Un abbraccio"
-Jack Hirschman
"To receive a letter from Chris
is to watch your immediate plans get put on hold."
-Joshua Ferris
"From a Bayview beat poet Chris Buck, thanks for those refreshing words."
-Hunters Point Shipyard
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Isn’t Dying
He sold his red truck, but he’s not dying
He may be losing his sight
But his vison has never been better
He just sent Greta Thunberg an email:
I greet you at the beginning of a great career,
When do we get the manifesto?
But he’s no Saint, just ask Nadja
Or Mariah from Ukiah
He’s not waiting for Godot
He’s studying the changing light of San Francisco
He’s wondering what you think about ‘Little Boy’
He’s awaiting perpetually and forever
For a new rebirth of wonder - and for a few more sales
He’s having another surrealist dream
And he’s not in a rush to come back
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Not Dying
excerpt
A poem by Christopher Scott Buck
Photo by Christopher Scott Buck
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Open Poem to Lawrence Ferlinghetti
from the Urban Forester
Despite our best efforts
Arbor Day is the least embraced of San Francisco’s events
People here just don’t find it sexy enough
Celebrated in America 100 years before the first Earth Day
And the Summer of Love
What if you celebrated the Human Be-In every year
And no hipsters showed up?
They are burning the man
Or at pre- and post-compression parties I guess
We revived Arbor Day here in 2005
Signature tree also honors local and Int’l greats
Cork oak for Rosa Parks on Van Ness
Coast live oak for Nelson Mandela in the Western Addition
And for Espanola Jackson of Hunters Point on Evans,
Charlie Starbuck got a tree on Geary,
Still volunteers planting trees for Friends of the Urban Forest
Every Saturday since 1981
Using public transit & arriving early each week
Trees in the ground before most of the City wakes...
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A poem by Christopher Scott Buck
Photo by Jonathan Condit
Our daughter beat the drum
I replied to texts from strangers - fast friends by dusk
Poets & pilgrims, we started at dawn
Across from 706 Wisconsin at 7:06 a.m.
The old family home in Potrero Hill
An annual literary pilgrimage
Across San Francisco to North Beach on March 24th
Honoring Lawrence Ferlinghetti on his birthday
The City’s Urban Forester, two years ago
Tired of waiting for the literary dis-establishment
Took it upon himself to declare it Ferlinghetti Day
Well if Dublin can honor Joyce with Bloomsday…
Planted two olive trees, met Mauro the man & Lorenzo the son
One helping ‘Little Boy’ come of age
The other, just a son caring for his father
Together, near the end
Biographers & filmmakers Giada & Elisa busy all week
So many of us, but just one son with his father
At the center, out of the limelight, within a community of care
Lorenzo will join us next year
Photo by Christopher Scott Buck, Connecticut 1990