When David and David came back from San Francisco last weekend, they were full of new enthusiasm for that wonderful city; and after looking at some of their pictures, I have been thinking all week about Lawrence Ferlinghetti... so I looked up some of his poems and found them to be as good as I had remembered them to be. I took a picture out in Ed’s backyard this morning and fooled with it this evening in my computer. Ferlinghetti’s poem “The Changing Light” makes a good accompaniment to it.

The changing light
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco is a sea light
an island
light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on
the city at dawn
And then the halcyon late mornings
after the fog burns off
and the sun paints white houses
with the sea
light of Greece
with sharp clean shadows
making the town look like
it had just been painted
But the wind comes up at four o'clock
sweeping the
hills
And then the veil of light of early evening
And then another scrim
when the new night fog
floats in
And in that vale of light
the city drifts
anchorless
upon the ocean.