Peter Weltner

To the Final Cinder Peter Weltner

Remembering
Steve Abbott
Dan Calder
Doug Carter
Gerry Coletti
William Dickey
Martin Fleischer
Ron Garner
Don Gillis
Jay Hayes
Jim Holloran
Ross Marbury
Michael Rubin
George Stambolian
Steve Steinberg
Shelby Topp
Deb Watkins
Doug Wolfe
and David, Glenn, Luke, Matt, Steve, Tomàs, and Wayne

Long before it started, people had claimed the land
from the dead below San Francisco whose bodies
were re-buried in Colma. New storms have blown the sand
off broken tombstones from the last two centuries
that--like discarded manhole covers, ruined pediments,
dug up foundations, concrete slabs were tossed
for breakwater on the beach. The sea never relents.
Every few years, it exposes the names of the lost.
This morning, two gulls fell on the Embarcadero, dead,
white, plump, unbloodied. Their fellows overhead
circled and keened, their looping bodies, dawn bright,
clouding the blue sky, wings flapping as in a rite,
their cries like rhymes, as the tides take form from regrets
and mourning is the wind that blows through sonnets