Central California Poetry Journal

Volume 99 Number 1

The Poetry of Central California Page 8114

The Poetry of Bob Bradshaw

Bob Bradshaw lives in Redwood City, California. About his work, Mr. Bradshaw writes,

"I like poems that tell stories. We connect to our California history through stories. The Gold Rush, the 1906 earthquake, the experiences of immigrants on Angel Island connect emotionally with us because of stories passed down to us. Our empathy for the people of California expands through storytelling. "The house shook like a piggy bank in the hands of a five year old...the streets swelled and rolled like waves. I quickly lost my sea legs..." Stories of the 1906 quake stay with me. Lists of statistics about the quake do not. The story of a Chinese immigrant who, because of a compulsory exam at Angel Island, had to completely undress before a stranger's eyes touches us. We feel her "shame" even though we may not share her culture. There is no need to ask "why" we tell stories. It would be like asking, Why do we have opposable thumbs? It's just the way we are."

Ghost Town, 1865

When John Sutter's people up and left him,
abandoning his stores and mill,
some people turned ugly.
They squatted on their neighbor's land.
Guns
became jurors. Bullets decided
inheritance rights. The creeks drew thieves
like mosquitoes.
Still, men waded with pans
into the creeks, the silt yellow
(they say) like a thick corn meal.
But the creeks began to ration their gold
grudgingly.

So the mountains were hosed down
like the homes of the rich when they're torched;
they weren't abandoned until only columns
were left standing, like thin timbers.
Hydraulic mining, they called it.
The hills emptied;
men who'd come from Boston, China, San Francisco,
and the jungles of South America
walked out of town
with starving mules.

It's been two years since the last man left.
Most roofs have collapsed under the weight
of snows. In the summer grizzlies shuffle
through the cabins,
like old women in slippers
who drink too much.
They knock over tables and chairs.
They lumber to the front door and eye me
as if I were a wolf abandoned by its pack,
a stranger easily turned
away.

I remember my first day in this ravine. I worked
the tail end of a rocker. I collected
the quicksilver in drawers,
and took it down to the creek.
Quicksilver clings to gold the way men do.
But it shrank in my washing
the way a hunk of adobe clay, clinging
to a creek's pebble, would.
A dollar for a day's work.
That's how it's gone for me.
I should have moved on.
But gold fever holds me the way a man
with money across a poker table
would. I want to hold on as long
as I can. I'm afraid, though,
I'm like the frog in the empty
well, who never gets kissed.
I look up at the emaciated hills.
But behind them is a grit of stars.
And awash in the sky's dark pan,
a good omen, a yellow
moon.

Visiting The Academy Of Sciences With My Five Year Old Son

A hallway of the world's most notorious
serial killers looms ahead. It's like
a respectable wax museum, sans wax.
A tour guide eyes us. Madame Tussaud,
I presume? My humor unsettles her,

and she shies off like a mammal sensing
a Tyrannosaurus unloosed. But Wyatt
is running his hand across the varnished
femur of a carnivore as lovingly
as a scholar touching a manuscript
of Byron or Keats with his white gloves.
He sees himself standing next to a spine
of bones in the Sahara that stretches
as far as The Great Barrier Reef.
Of course, I'm jealous. Opportunities
like that disappeared for me long ago.
My only protection is smugness,

like that of a man on vacation,
his neighbors facing the day's long commute.

At home, Wyatt rehearses for his career:
Dinosaur Scientist. He imagines
an Apatosaurus living among the salads
of our garden. Look! he shouts
and he sees footprints stamped in our soil.

Daddy, can I have a pet?
I play our game pokerfaced. You want a turtle?
Oh, no. I want a Plesiosaurus.

I could watch unnerved as the years
disappear. Regrets
over not applying myself could haunt me
like winning lottery tickets misplaced.
To have fathered Wyatt, though,
makes me shake my head, in disbelief,
at such undeserved and welcomed luck.

as if mastering tai chi. A
slow contortion, an effort
to be hip, as Brenda wrapped
her arms across her chest.

All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 1998. 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 © Bob Bradshaw 1998.

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