Don Piccolo lives in the Sacramento Delta area on a small farm. For the past few years, he has volunteered at Aņo Nuevo State Reserve near Pescadero, California.
Don Piccolo's poetry is also featured in the 2000 edition of The Central California Poetry Journal on page 0002.
Whitecaps seem to slide to shore
Seals scattered along the beach
I've been in sun and rain
But wind present a different day
Ripples of the sandy dune
Above the beach the blades
The rodent today most pleased
I think back to young families
And farther still to folks
And count myself so lucky
Gulls hunkered down among
the beach debris, gravel
rubble rock
flipping sand that drifts briefly
in the salty air
Brown pelicans struggle
above the capping surf
searching for silvered strips
of fish
both warm, cold and still
yet folks venture forth with proper
gear to seek what sights avail
The sand blowing in the eye
Their lover's hair, and leaving a errant grain
between a tooth or two
are moving south
be sure!
of marshes' grass motion
a subtle dance, smallest flowers
seem secure hidden low
beneath the tempest howler
For harrier, kite, or osprey
dare not challenge the gale
They perch among groves of pine
in parks where children play
in sands of boxed juggle gyms
while dads roast dogs upon
a charcoal fire
who never risk a foray
beyond the flicking light
Watching life wane
while actors play
the parts
to be among these living things
out on this windy dune
watching nature puff and blow
Yet whisper to be sure:
This is your finest hour!
Extinct volcano looms above
Native past abounds
while native women
Our trip a boating holiday
Wide mouth bass and hitch
Boy and man camped
Rite of passage near...
Turn a head at
Marsh, soda springs and geysers
lapping shore of algae greens 'n
bayous of herons in cottonwood
in names of creeks, towns,
parks and mountain peak
cover their likeness
in white man's museum
with Pomo chammy bra
as was and is today
for a lake of warm shallows
with algae bloom and blue gill
are sought by angler
on shore and in derby trawler
in and about the tulle grass
Beside Clear Lake
on hillside of valley oak
madrone and willow
Talk at night of town
where pickups reign
and pretty girls
big wheel tires
Wranglers
Belt buckles and Skoal
A friend is nuts about light-rail trains
He'll ride trolley cars in San Francisco
just for the thrill...He once took me
on a ride on a long one that looked
old and green like a metal slug clank,
clang up hills and into a tunnel(he'd know
the run).
Sentiment, perhaps, or a latent wish he,
too, could've been a street car motorman
instead of a common hack for the system.
Marshaling teenagers into cohesive
learning groups(against his better judgment,
and their as well). Street cars don't go there,
removed by the powers at city hall long ago.
The J street line out to Oak Park is held
in the memory of old boys at the park
playing Cribbage and in battered photographs.
I've been told the beat-up yellow ones and
the orange ones; the high black-banded ones;
red-roofed and really noisy ones; those with
long-armed-electric-coursing thru' from a
high wire hung into the motor works deep
internally hidden and wound are in Brazil
or Argentina or in the street car museum
in Kennebunkport, Maine.
He has a track of models set up every Christmas
and maybe why I remember him at this time
of year; or maybe, because I too, wanted in some
way to be that guy in the old photographs taking
nickels from the passengers rocking to and back
again from the far flung suburbs out to high rise
buildings of business center of our city. Just maybe
I'd look good in the uniform the trolleyman's hat
with the insignia of Motorworks of My Town USA
emblazoned above the black and shiny bill, the standard
issue jacket with my name and company embroidered
in black thread, standing out proud against the green
surge.
No place it seemed to be
To me, its was just a wayside
Seals alone as us, home they be
But who she is who stares
Is paltry our patent life
But there we be
Even at sunset
Where the light now waned
above the sea cliffs dark and
foreboding
pause, a spot to rest weary feet
and chance to swap boots for
fur lined moccasins. For her
seeming far more, alone as
me her dark sedan as apparition
like the murky clouds herald the
churning surf.
But us out on that rock on edge
of a continent...they flip sand,
scratch a errant itch, to catch
a snooze before their plunge
into the deep...
out at the sunsets ebb. To
make this moment poised
as to meld within the sea
and weather life from clash
and mount of wave.
here on planet earth, planted
as it were, where we walk
and tread...for churning,
cresting, rolling wave
call for daunting strength
Our needs the equivalent
of rarely revealed...
The places we find our
selves...above the face
of cliff before a stormy
sea
Boss in nervous acceptance
Meat of the read
Talk of cow-boy poetry
Thanked them for the honor
Checked my load
Passing fields
Such is life
Passes approval of poem's
Repeat to counter girl, yard boss
and warehouse hands
was Natives and
our State's riches
History and its life
Animals, both pet and
otherwise and a nod
to the poet for good recite
Beheld the grind in progress
Dust and chaff
filling air and lungs
Barrel and sack
Waved to yard hand
And geared to drive
of new mow
Tractor swathe
bale and rake
on Spring morn'
Hay-time on the farm
between chores
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway2002. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Don Piccolo 2002 All Rights Reserved
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1-01-03