Poem: Twenty-Six Blocks

Twenty-Six Blocks

When the weather was nice,
and it usually was, I walked home

from work, twenty six blocks,
from Mission Street downtown

to Potrero Hill. You have
probably driven this route

but I doubt you’ve walked it:
two miles completely flat

and the last four blocks uphill.
I wasn’t doing it for exercise.

I stopped once each block
and took a photograph,

a picture corresponding
to each letter of the alphabet:

SRO hotel entrance, mechanics
shops (wheel repair, tinting),

a vacant lot under the freeway,
weeds, vines and street debris,

art college, culinary institute,
that shadowy stretch beneath 280

where the commuter trains run.
Natoma and Minna Streets you

may know about, but what about
Tehama, Shipley and Bluxome?

I amHansel, leaving a trail of crumbs,
Icarus clocking out the labyrinth,

the sun, no threat to my waxen wings.
These were not the known sidewalks

of San Francisco; no one expected
to see a pedestrian in these crosswalks.

Yet there I was, walking the alphabet
on a fall evening, cataloguing every

chain link fence, each curb cut
and driveway, ascending Pennsylvania

Avenue at the end of it all, turning
to look back at the uneven skyline,

the famous hills behind them,
the hidden towers of a bridge,

a fog bank pouring over Sutro Heights,
the sunset already underway

over Land’s End and the Farallons,
my pathway disappearing in darkness.

This poem originally appeared in Atmospheric Rivers (2023)