 Hello and welcome everyone. Thanks for coming to today's Poetry Reading. I'm John Smalley, a librarian at the General Collections and Humanities Center on the third floor of the main library. While I'm waiting for just a few more people to join us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our community and to tell you about one of our upcoming events later this week. So on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library, we wish to welcome you to the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatushaloni, who are the original inhabitants of this San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatushaloni have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place. As guests, we who reside in their traditional territory recognize that we benefit from living and working on their homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatushaloni community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. So this coming Thursday in this very room, we have another Poetry Reading and that is that will be hosted by the San Francisco, one of the San Francisco poet, our Emerita, Kim Shuck. And this will be a poetry reading featuring poets in the recent anthology, Uncommon Ground, BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism. And this is a program that's part of a regular monthly series the second Thursday of each month, Poem Jam. So you can learn more about our programs by picking up a flyer from the table or one of our newsletters or by visiting the events calendar on our website at sfpl.org. Please also help yourself to coffee and cookies on the table. So that ends my announcements for upcoming programs. Today's program celebrates the environment and today's MC is the impressive author and poet Lucille Langde, who has graciously agreed to fill in as the MC of the original host Dr. Kim McMillan couldn't make it. Before I turn the mic over to Lucie, I want to mention that she is the award-winning author of at least 17 books which include the recent Birds of Sampancho and other poems of place. By the way, there are copies on the table. She's also the editor of several anthologies, including Fire and Rain, Echo Poetry of California, and Red Indian Road West, Native American Poetry from California. And we have these books and many others on the third floor of this very library. So that said, now let's all please give a warm welcome to Lucille Langde. Thank you, John. And I want to say, start by saying thank you to the San Francisco Public Library for hosting this event. Thank you to, yes, and thank you to all of us, all of you joining us in the audience. And I want to say thank you to all of the wonderful poets reading with me today. Everybody who is reading with me, my path has crossed theirs many times in many ways through the years. And I'm just truly delighted to be reading with all of you. Our reading today is of environmental poetry. So we're reading poems that honor our planet Earth, that celebrate our planet Earth, and that also have the goal of contributing to healing our planet Earth. Because our beautiful planet has been abused in many ways for many years by our species. But there are still, there's still much beauty here to save. And there's much, there are many things that can be healed. I personally believe that even global warming can be reversed. So it's not too late. So we have six poets reading today. The first one will be DeVora Major. She's the author of seven poetry collections, two novels, and myriad stories and essays. She was also San Francisco's third poet laureate. And her latest book is Caliphia's Daughter. So welcome DeVora. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome everyone who's here. Is this on? Yeah? Okay. I thought I would, okay. I thought I would start with the beginning, which is, I have to say, because I have an epigraph at the beginning from the Bible, although I'm not particularly Christian bound. But what fascinated me, I watched this documentary on the stars, was how the Earth got made, and that it, what they said how it was made was indeed the same. And the Earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And that's King James' version. One. Dark matter tendrils wove a cosmic womb, bulging with ambionic fluids, dense and searing, blinding blue-height heat spread across the blackness, imploding, exploding, birthing a shockwave of hurled energy, a scatter of star seeds, glistening prisms. These stars were midwives to our universe, iron to salt, water to copper, a rush of green, the blood of us. Two. The shards of our son's placenta formed our planet. Her solar breath gusts an umbilical cord of energy that we ceaselessly feed upon. Three. This age of stars is one short breath in the universe's time that will one day give way to another age of darkness where we are not even a memory. And I'm moving to that. I'm a California woman, truly, not just that I was born and raised and live here, but that my father of Caribbean heritage and Harlem said you could not get out of the city often enough. And so every three day weekend after dinner on Friday, we got in a car and rode somewhere more often than not where there were red woods. And then every Monday when it got dark, we drove back. And so this is called forest memories and tears. One. Child walk, care steps around trees, close to ferns and north side moss, seeking sunray patterns of embroidered lace falling between redwood limbs onto the green brown needles covering the ground. Cray neck child trying to see the top of each tree who taught fragile child how to stand up straight, stretch towards the sun. Child eyes wide and open trunk, each ring carrying a history year by year of drought, fire, flood, a glory of rain. Brown arm child reaching less than halfway around an Auburn bristlebark trunk holding a millennia of knowledge. Each tree, one village in a country of villages ever learning, ever growing, ever giving, ever green, too. Each time an elder dies, we say we have lost a library. What then is lost when acres of one, two, 3000 year old trees are eaten by fires, a crackle of wire, a sputter of match, an ember of campfire, and the forest I knew where I could always breathe without wheeze or stab is turned to ash. What is lost of the tree people who knew the ancestors of the ancestors of the ancestors of the first people who traveled to this land and ate of its fruits? What of the tree nation gutted by we new ones who with hubris and apathy devour our history, deoxygenate our earth, leaving dry land barely moistened by our tears? So that was a fire poem. This is a flood poem. Speaking of floods, this is not a poem about ordinary floods. The Nile flooding each year then receiving, receding to leave the fertile crescent that helped pyramids to grow and dynasties to flourish. Not the river swelling and climbing over false boundaries, splitting open tracks built too close to its shores. This is not a poem about floods of memory, floods of regret, floods of immigrants, floods of resources. This is not a poem about the water that hammered into homes, changing streets into rivers rising, rushing, turning back on themselves, flood flowing in a confusion of directions, none of them forward. Lives washed away, memories soaked in torn, families bloated and dying, villages surrounded by water yet full of thirst, an insatiable flooding, a flood beyond flood. But this poem is not about ordinary floods. We understand the caprice of the planet and the cruelties and the paradox. But after the storms, after the houses have melted back into the earth from which they were born, when the waters go down and the bodies float up and the living dry their eyes and close, begin to stretch out their memories and begin to bury the dead. After the dreams that had to be jettisoned were mowed down by bulldozers or flattened by wind, leaving empty land, what of the floods that remained? The fetid flood of indifference, the sour flood of disdain, the shark filled flood of ignorance, the banal flood of bigotry. Yes, there are ways that we have grown and made a common cause of healing, turned to self to find the strength, but it is not enough. We need a channeled flood of righteous anger, demanding a flood of justice, a flood of compassion, a flood of solutions, a flood of tools, a flood of truth. And I will end with this one about us on the earth. We are this place. We are this place, the clay and silt of it, the river and sand of it. Fingers rise from desert dunes, faces emerge from cresting waves, bodies unfold like tropical blossoms flush with the odors of honey and decay. We are the forest we fell, the mountains we devour, the lands we poison. Our bodies are the seed and ash of this place. We are not merely the caretakers of this place. We are this place, this place of gold and silt. And what do we do with this gift and debt? Where in prayer is the space for truth? When amidst these interminable wars is the table of compassion set. Even in our worm selves, as we turn and spit, fertilizing the future with our waste, we are so much more than we imagine. We are spirit resilient, rock unforgiving, wind eternal. Let us move now from the storms of hate and fear and cleanse this place that is us. Sacrifice nothing but our arrogance and the need to destroy and subvert the glories of the universe that are us. We are more than we have imagined, more than we have invented and discovered inside our pulsing dreams. Sing with me of a better day when we learn this planet as ourselves. We are this place, shaping its tomorrows. We need to dream it well. I thank you. Thank you, DeVora. And yes, we are indeed this planet. So our next reader will be Jenny Lim. She's the recipient of two lifetime achievement awards, one from Penn Oakland and one from the Berkeley Poetry Festival. A San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate Emerita, she is author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA, La Morte del Tempo, and Island Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island. And she's also the winner of the American Book Award for that book. So welcome, Jenny. Thank you, Lucille, for doing the honors. Thank you for John for organizing this with Kim, who isn't able to be here today in the San Francisco Public Library. This is such an important theme. And it really is, I think the background connecting to all of our violence and ills. And an image came to mind, you know, Edward Monk's scream and that silent scream says so much. I felt a large scream pass through nature. How could Monk have known 135 years ago, that soundless howl, that cry of anguish concealed in everyone and everything, like some wild wounded beasts captured in beeswax, paraffin, and gum pastels. The self annihilation, the powerful and beautiful natural order of things receding into chaotic flight. In recoiling terror. Only the crows and gulls seem to know their sinister cause and flapping of wings etched in things to come. How did we come to take this route? If the screech of crow's sound, like the scream of someone being hung, the scream of nature is the sound of madness, a river at its breaking point, an earth shattering roar, limitless and inhuman, sweeping everything away, fragmenting memory, dispatching death without justice or partiality. In the time it takes a pot of water to boil, the cry, the scream, the howl. Myths. Sweet river of night spill over the bay with your bright red orange flames. Let the blood of paradise scorch the roofs, treetops, and our desperate hearts. It's no illusion the city's on fire from within. Guan Gong, God of war and poets after your star hopping binge with the cowherd's daughter, please beg King Yan, the God of death to postpone destruction. Put on trial mankind's failure to end war and disaster should result in a murder conviction. If the snake and the peacock can bury the hatchet, one crawling on his belly unable to see the light, the other rising to heights without self reflection, buried in bitcoins and profit margins with heads and sand, there might be accountability in this story of two worlds, history and allegory. But poetry isn't poetry and words aren't just words. A pigeon pecks at the crumbs of meaning in a homeless camp where a dog sleeps by a woman in a bed of cardboard and do. A block away Chinatown takes off her dress of corrugated metal and plastic like a rejected bride ashamed of her body. There must be a truce in the city. The sounds unleashed in the throats of chickens about to be butchered and children masked and shuttered behind sobbing wars should break a heart of any soldier or politician lights from the empty offices of skyscrapers flicker like stars through the fortress evolution. I hear a mother's heart beating in me. There must be dreams for the sky to become real. There must be a boat for the wind to carry memory and a God to whisper the names of all the dead in whom death means nothing. Sweet river of night spill over the bay with your bright red orange moon. I am still here. It's a new year. It's no illusion. The planet is still here. Big and small the small blue earth balances on the wing of a hummingbird who sips a drop of nectar through the arrow of his beak. He shoots into the air and slips through a pinhole of sky at 1000 heartbeats a minute under the brim of the sun. The blue whale dives in the depths through deafening sonar electric nets and jit digital harpoons that pierce her hundred foot long body. She surfaces blood spouting through her blowhole not knowing she will be quartered and leached into ambergris at a hundred bucks a gram in colored bottles too small to fit even a hummingbird. Ode to the Pacific what will the whale say? Where will the dolphin play? And what will a fish do with this extra fin and mouth? The ice shelf is melting and the water will burn like fire. We beg the clouds forgiveness for just one drop of water to quench our dying thirst. I'm going to end with this one. The butterflies dream. The poet walked into the city of darkness looked metaphor metaphor straight in the eye and saw nothing. The sky had shorn itself of light and left her soul along the cracks of drying rivers and lakes. The hollow wells remembered water and the coffins build their skeletons names into the names of rivers. Saraswati, Euphrates, Mekong, Yellow, Mississippi, forgotten rivers, lakes with no beginning or end. The rose, gardenia, dahlia, camellia, the amorous, showered the clockwork dawn with their inflorescence. The poet shouted into an ear of corn but heard nothing. The sun had gone home for the day and was known to beg along the canals where politicians argued with forensic engineers over the cause of inflow. We were only lovers and had nothing to say. The words of singers, passers-by poets and philosophers rattled in their grand marble of obituaries, keynote dinners, readings and clanging forks and knives humid as summer. A history arranged over a menu of smoked duck foie gras with nothing left to chance but chance itself. The poet commissioned the stars on dark matter to draft a memoir on truth, on the loss of innocence and all its personifications to which the pope replied, pardon the wounded sinner. And the choir fled through the revolving door of epochs clinging to their prayer beads and shadows, leaving the pews to echo the psalms in the alms of the faithful. The scientists carved the names of lands out of the tiniest atom to the largest galaxy on their mountainous tombstones. And the poets memorialized each other's ghosts. The dragon-tailed bamboo along the riverside was none other than the sage, E.T., banished for making wine. And the milky way, a bridge of magpies, led the cowherd to his maid in the mirror of night. The dragon and the tiger contrived a truth. And east became west, became east, and the carnivore became vegetarian in this journey to the west that left nothing to name but namelessness itself in the eternal book of changes. Thank you, Jenny. So our next poet is D. Allen. He's an African Italian performance poet based in Oakland. And he's the author of seven books. The bio I have here says that he's appeared in 66 anthologies. However, I believe it's actually at least 67 now because I received an anthology in the mail last week that includes one of his poems. So welcome, D. I like to start my spoken word performance set with a little land acknowledgement. Curse of writer's credo. Just because you steal something, landmass, continent, vast territory, the island standing erect on top of a giant turtle's back, doesn't mean you own it. Settlement free country, colonial territory, white man's land, start of empire, gains old gotten with instruments, muskets, smallpox blankets, army swords. This is still Indian country. First ones in the bay, first villages in the bay, Yolamu, Wichin, San Francisco, Oakland. First languages use Ramitush Chacheno, first workers on the land of Oaks haven't vanished into the past. And you live on a lonely land. Plastic isle. Pachamama, Mother Earth unleashes her scream for help straight from the Pacific Ocean, where warm Pacific water meets colder arctic water, slowly churning around and around and around and around, pulling into the strong current, sailing debris, disposed items, mostly polymers, mostly trapped plastic into the vortex. The artificial center surprisingly will hold and stay afloat for time and definite, growing to a larger size infinite. The most cities refuse flows from three separate coast. Talk to swim down, feed it sewers, eventually reaching the greater ocean. Sea goals get peckish feeling in flight, spot colored wire, torn trash bags, mistaken for squirming food. Plastic isle that should not be testament to wastefulness, adrift at sea. Kule low glow was what the Miwok Indians called Olima California prior to Spanish contact. The visitor center held no fresh wonders for me. The path ahead of head of it intrigued me more. Cutting past eucalyptus trees, which finally led to Kule low glow nestled under thick Douglas fir trees, Cotca houses, where gatherers of salmon, clams and acorn slept. Lama, sweat lodge, where men went sweating themselves to purity. Roundhouse, where the chief mother gave prayers to her clan. A step back in time to a village Miwok tongues named to honor Valley of the Bear. Based on actual people and events, this one is called Washa Quonane. Many who had hiked through Canadian wilderness a century ago, took notice of a bird in flight, a rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flies by night at once a hunter, a guide, a trapper, a living made from the furs in his sight. A rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flies by night into his forest lair. He gave shelter to a pair of beavers and a female pony. Beautiful, willful, contrite, a rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flies by night. He recorded every caper onto pages of paper, turn articles and books, thousands read his every insight. A rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flies by night. He took bold strides to speak for trees and wildlife's nature's preservation from devastation became his plight. A rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flies by night. Then he traveled to an evening powwow where it's shown native chiefs how he embraced their ways, mastered their sacred dances by firelight. A rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flies by night. In Canada, in England news has spread. One day at home, he was suddenly dead. His secrets out, the red Indian was English and white. A rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flew by night. But never mind the buckskins, the feathered headdress, the moccasins, or false tales about his past every slight. A rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flew by night. His other steps were true after all preventing ecology's steady fall. What mattered was the nature of his fight. A rare one deal jibba called Washa Quonane. He who flew by night. And the last poem is called strong arm. Tossed down, buried, fertilized, watered, introduced to the farmland soil. Terminator seeds. Seeds germinating after terminating after one use. Planned sterility. Terminator seeds breed dependency. Farmers run to the seeds parent company year after year begging for mow seeds needed to grow mow crops, mow grains, fruits, vegetables, and sign and date a promise in print never to save the seeds, never to grow future crops with them beforehand. The strong arm of Monsanto, stronger than any state. A little seed made in a lab solid proof one company and mother earth wrestled Monsanto one. Ownership of life, genetic pollution, contamination of nature, poison in our produce. The rich and upper middle class eat food, healthy, organic, locally grown. Mutations fill the Pope people's plates. The strong arm of Monsanto, stronger than any state. Our bodies weren't meant to be testing grounds for geneticist experiments. Beware eating from the garden of red flags brought to us by the same hands that gave us DDT, PCB, RBGH, aspartame, saccharine, age and orange, roundup. They products in your local food bank, houseless shelters, your soup kitchen, food max, foods coast, Safeway, your grocery outlet, Starbucks, Olive Garden. Hostage, 80 percent of America's food supply. The strong arm of Monsanto, stronger than any state. If there is any reason to partake in a city farm's bounty, drop non-toxic sea bombs into empty plots of land. Label tainted food, spread the community garden far and wide beyond the hood, nourish our bodies with as fruits most pure. This is it. And the poems I just performed for you today come from three books. Three of the poems came from my fifth book, Eloyonichi, which means Mother Earth in the Chalagi Nation or Cherokee language. Poems, 1990, poems, 2013 to 2018, released Earth Day 2020. This came out in the early days of the pandemic. And the poem I opened up with came from my sixth book, Rusty Gallows, Passages Against Hate, from Vagabond Books, which I happened to have for sale for $15 each. And one last copy of Eloyonichi for $12. And one poem, the second one, came from my seventh book, Plans, whose first year anniversary happens to be today. This was put out by Nomadic Press one year ago today, and I thank them for that. From this mic to your ears, I'm Dee Allen. Thanks for listening. Protect our only home for people, for animals, for its own health. Thank you, Dee. That was terrific. Okay, so I'm the next poet reading. I'm still Lucille Langday. And although I love this background for reading, I'm going to stand over here because it's easier. I'm reading from two different books. And I'm going to start out by reading a couple of poems from an anthology I co-edited called Fire and Rain, Eco-Poetry of California. And I co-edited this book with desert poet Ruth Nolan. And I will start out with a poem called Mount St. Helena. Climb through the chaperral, past oaks and knobcone pines, with cones hunched on the trunks, past the stony opening of the old Silverado mine, and over the lost vein that a future prospector might someday find. Climb past madrones and manzanitas with cool red bark and sour berries, past gray pines with pale needles and sugar pines, named for the sap oozing on two-foot cones, past rock formations etched by the wind's sharp teeth. Don't fall on the steep parts of the trail. Go slowly. Watch your footing. Increase your pace when the path levels out. Stop to rest when your heart pounds. Your legs grow wobbly as gelatin and sweat pours from your brow. But don't give up. It's too easy to turn around and go back down. Don't miss your goal. Keep climbing all the way to the top, where trees give way to vegetation, lying close to earth. And you can see valley and bay vineyards, distant peaks, and the wheeling flight of a golden eagle, whose white wing patches and tailband gleam in the creamy light and legs are feathered to the toes. And I think of that poem as being metaphorical, not just, you know, the only goal there isn't just the goal to reach the top of Mount St. Helena, but it can be any goal that we set for ourselves, including the goal of healing the earth. And the next poem is called Naturalists, and it's for Devlin, my youngest grandchild. Two years old, he takes my hand, leads me to the Blackberry Vine, growing on the fence in his backyard. They're not ripe yet, he explains, then points to a small hole in the earth. The ants live there. I need a digging stick, he announces, holding up a fragile twig and shaking his head. This one's no good. I hand him a thicker stick. Perfect! In a shady corner near the patio, he digs and makes a find. It's a roly-poly in a ball, he says. I hold out my hand to receive the woodlouse, a terrestrial crustacean. Gretchen and I called them pillbugs in first grade when we found them with ants and Jerusalem crickets. Careful, my grandson warns, a pincher bug, it will pinch you. He points to an earwig, an insect with sirk eye, forceps on its abdomen. It's had five molts before becoming an adult. Someday I will tell him this and that females have straight pinchers, males curved ones. Today, though, he's the teacher and I'm his eager pupil standing in light while Blackberry's ripen and a woodlouse on rolls. And I'll just add as a footnote to this poem that I think it's on all of us to teach the next generation to cherish the earth. And now I'm going to read a few poems from my latest poetry collection, Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place. And I'll start with a poem called The Real Thing and this takes place in Palo Verde National Park in Costa Rica. In a boat skimming past red and black mangroves, close packed, leaning over the briny Rio Tampizque, where crocodiles swim, their scales down the middle of their backs, breaking the water's murky surface like chains of floating rocks. I think of the jungle crews in Disneyland, my father beside me when I was eight. When the fake crocodile opened its jaws, he said, how would you like to see the real thing? I said I would and meant it, but knew I'd never go with him. He feared planes, boats, and the depths of rivers. But now I'm looking into the eyes of a live crocodile in a jungle river, pale green marbles, the pupil's vertical black slits. The crocodile regards me with no apparent interest, while herons dip for fish iguana's bask on branches overhead and rosy at spoonbills splash the sky with pink. Howler monkeys stay high in the trees, but white-faced capuchins crowd around the boat when we stop. One climbs on the roof. Another poops from a limb a few feet away. It hits the water with a splash. Daddy, who put so many ideas in my head, I hope you're looking down from heaven at this monkey relieving itself beside me, then popping a big black spider into its mouth. It's the real thing. And the next one is called At Lake Tahoe. Granite mountains dense with white furs, lodgepole pines, and ponderosa's rise abruptly from the lake's blue bowl so deep its waters could cover all of California and Nevada. The Washows, who lived here 10,000 summers, named it Lake in the Sky because it reflected clouds, sunset, and stars. They caught lahant and trout in the lake, mountain whitefish in icy streams. On the other side of the continent, my Wampanoag ancestors were gathering cranberries, covering their summer homes with cattail mats, baking clams, drying corn, and fishing for salmon off Cape Cod. The Washows used only fallen trees for homes they would dismantle before leaving Lake in the sky each winter. In fall they gathered pinion pie nuts to eat until spring. That was before white people came and cut down the pinion pines to build their houses, dynamited the mountains in search of silver and gold and claimed the fish. Now a paddle boat with three decks takes tourists on cruises of Lake Tahoe. Yet in summer Washows still do the pine nut dance and Wampanoags do the grass dance to keep the world in balance and remind us that the earth is living, every rock is sacred, and every tree and salmon has a soul. And I will conclude with a poem from the Oakland Zoo. This is called The Last Day of Zoo Camp. Children in blue and gold zoo camp t-shirts gather at picnic tables on a hilltop shaded by pines. They have met the boa with its reddish brown camouflage pattern, baboons with butts calloused for comfort, fruit bats which cannot echo, locate, but see better than any other bats, sunbears with orange necklaces of fur, and turtles whose favorite color is red. The little train has taken the campers past wallabies, emus, and kangaroos which cannot walk backward. They have hidden treats for chimpanzees whose DNA is 98.4 percent identical to their own and watch them eat eager as children finding candy. Now the campers sing about penguins which can stay underwater for 20 minutes, hippos with four-foot-tall smiles and tigers with striped skin beneath their striped fur. Parents and grandparents look on remarkable mammals with 26 bones in each foot, a nose that can remember 50,000 cents, a brain that's 80 percent water and a charge to save this planet where they are outweighed by termites 10 to 1. Thank you and our next poet is John Curl. John is the author of 12 poetry collections including his latest Rainbow Weather Poems for Environmental Healing published by Vagabond Books. And I had the honor of being one of the pre-publication readers of this book and I'll just add that I think that this is a profound and important book. So welcome John. Something wrong. Something is very wrong. The chemical smells, sick plants, dying birds and insects. It actually hasn't been very long. Just a blink in geologic time since we began transforming these wild watery gardens of ourselves, the universe of our own bodies into toxic dumps. Are we too far lost to retrace our steps to find our way back? Although I don't know their names or their places on my family tree or on anyone's family tree, I am certain that somewhere in the past and in your past and in all of our pasts were people who knew how to live in better ways than these, who lived in good ways, who walked lovingly on the earth, who did not cause too much damage to other people or to other creatures or to our mother and who left our world perhaps even a little better than they found it. It is to these ancestors that we need to turn for guidance to find their lost path and follow it. Are we too far lost to retrace our steps to find our way back? It actually hasn't been very long. Strange odors, sick birds, dying trees, just a blink in geologic time since we began transforming these gardens of ourselves, this wild, watery universe of our own bodies. Slide deep, slide deep, but do not sleep. Engage the world through your core. Slide deep, then step outside of yourself. This is the moment you have been waiting for. The time the mockingbird sang about. Keep your left ear always alert as you slide through the shadows into your center, but do not sleep. Slide deep into your shade, into your forest. But this night as you ride that force down into your core, slide deep, but do not sleep. Keep your left ear alert. Then step out. You are a butterfly, fluttered at the mist from your wings. Come to me, fly to me through the pain, a light on my shoulder. Poison has merged into the perfect water all we have ever loved, present, past, future, are at risk. Cancer, festering in every wound, force-fed by every banker in the smashed windows of every burned-out school, lunchroom, and convenience store. Lawns, beaten and betrayed. Dandelions, cowering in cruel spaces. The guilty plead impunity. The mothers drink defiance. The forest voices are speaking. The forest is speaking. Feel that thunder streaming outward from your center in ever-widening circles through the places of your childhood, your neighborhood, that energy of love, the force that ties us all together, all the rooms you've ever cared about engulfing those dear ones in ever-widening circles of family, friends, workmates, pets, plants, rocks, trees, the living and those who have journeyed on. Crawl with me into this cozy space under this ancient oak tree surrounded by these roots. This is yours and ours. This is your habitat, your only home. When you awake, remember this den and the way there. Then tonight, when you sleep, do not sleep, but slide deep. Engage the world through your core. Keep your left ear alert. Do not sleep, but slide deep. Then step outside of yourself. Fly to me through the pain. Butterfly a light on my shoulder. Return with me to your den. Shhh. The forest voices are listening. The forest is listening. No fear. We walk these darkened streets in a time of shadows. Spies lurk everywhere. Secret societies over shadow. Hidden agendas pollute the air. Forced priests lecture. Hippocritical pieties. Professional liars conjecture about the finer nature of society. Doctors of philosophy debate and lay the bait over trap doors while grim reapers surround us. Murky endless arbitrary wars. No fear. Surmounting countless wasted hours. Hear the music of the flowers dancing rhythms of the spheres. Shout truth to the dark powers beyond all deluded frontiers. No fear in the now and here. TV news. Chinese puzzles. Every truth stood on its head. Turn my brain into puddles. Make me long to stay in bed. What is really going on now? What their goals and motivations? Who is pulling all the strings? Why the banks and politicians all wear bling and gangster rings? Why? Where are we supposed to turn now? Betrayed by stuges and buffoons. Why have we all been praying to the dark side of the moon? No fear. Surmounting countless wasted hours. Hear hear the music of the flowers dancing rhythms of the spheres. Shout truth to the dark powers beyond all deluded frontiers. No fear in the now and here. Feudal to believe in. Dangerous to speak your mind. Mincing words. Social justice attacked by demons. Mincing words as evil shines. Surrendering what we grieve for. Is this the best we can be? The sky unclear but spring a hopeless possibility? Are these the jaws we are all trapped in? Is there no home where liberation rings? Or are these all just pathetic fantasies? Real world impossibilities? Are we all too disheartened to stand up and sing? No fear. Surmounting countless wasted hours. Hear hear the music of the flowers dancing rhythms of the spheres. Shout truth to the dark powers beyond all deluded frontiers. No fear. No fear in the now and here. Success. We meet clinging to the cliff at the edge of the world after a long journey. You are here. You have survived. I have enormous respect for you for that accomplishment. So congratulations on your success. You are clever, fast, persistent, enduring, wily. The simple fact that you're alive is proof. You needed to be in order to survive through this blood-soaked mess and chaos. As any glance at history will demonstrate, they keep killing each other every day, almost anywhere we look. Bedlam and Mayhem, and they've been doing that since as far back as anybody chooses to remember or to forget since time never began. While in the thick of it all, you and I direct descendants of the long stream of life back through the first pre-humans. And before that, to ever form, we took way back when, when you and I have somehow made it through all this chaos and murder together, together. It's been quite a journey and it hasn't been easy. So it's a victory for all of us. We have arrived at this place. We are the winners. We are the survivors. But where do we go from here? And then I'll finish my reading with the with the title poem of of this little collection called Rainbow Weather. Rainbow Weather. Dueling with the devil in the eye of the hurricane. Venus in retrograde. Aries rising. Dark spots cover the sun. Predators without shame. Nothing true under their darkness. Nothing new under their guns. Nothing to eat but dogs bane and wolves bane. Nothing to cast but blame. Nothing can change without struggle and pain yet nothing can ever stay the same. But those murmurs in the gales gusting all around us sing. They sing of something just beyond the storm. Rainbow weather's rolling in. I can smell it. I swear it. Rainbow weather's rolling in like dawn. Armies marching through the night. Monumental crimes and blunders. Scorched cliffs all around us. Centuries of rape and plunder. Bats flocking together. Centipedes abusing power. Jackals sniffing every crack. For lovers in a secret bower. But but those murmurs in the gales gusting all around us. Sing of something just beyond the storm. Rainbow weather's rolling in. I can smell it. I swear it. Rainbow weather's rolling in like dawn. Thank you. Thank you, John. So our final poet will be the inimitable Avacha. Avacha has been published in English and Spanish in the USA, Mexico, and Europe and in more anthologies than she remembers. She has shared stages with Sonia Sanchez, Piri Thomas, Janice Miracatani, Diane De Prima, Michael Franti, Jane Cortez, and with Jose Montoya's Royal Chicano Air Force. And she's a Bay Area icon with her jazz group Avacha and Modupoi. Avacha. Thank you so much. Can you hear me? I thank you for coming out and all my dear friends here. I mean, Jenny Lim and DeVore Major, we've known each other since the Civil War. We were all waitresses at the Last Supper and it's always an honor to be on any bill with them and I'm grateful to be here with the rest of the folks. So I want to do a couple of things from my book which is with every step I take two and I got a couple over there and a couple more in this bag here if you want one. And it's 272 pages of me in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. And a couple of the poems are from a book that hasn't come out yet. They'll be coming out hopefully in another few months called Oaktown Mosaic. And that one is over 200 pages as well. So please support your local artist, especially me. Now support all of us. Support all of us please. Okay, so this is called Big Mama's Miniature Miracles. It all began with a little drop of dew. As stupidity knocked down too many trees and the rain ran away when the clouds disappeared and arrogance lost its mind. Next, some big money jerks come pay an unasked for visit covered the beauty of nature's creation and creation's bounty with concrete and a whole heartbroken earth turned in on itself. I say she turned in on herself brutally humiliated old girl was devastated as she was forced to watch her biodiversity fade. The silent spaces where birds used to play and desperate bumblebees crazed honeybees armies of disoriented worker bees and homeless daythrown queen bees hooked on pollen starving slipped unnoticed into the safe obscurity of passing winds and quietly followed the flowers that got away. She sat. I say she sat had to watch the leaves fall to the ground feel the pain of seeing the plushes of folios kids rotten and died. Mother nature was pissed and she cried was furious but she just cried. She ate the hate and got sick from the steady diet of disrespect as she tried to be cool and get through this rerun circle of strife still under our feet. All kinds of little critters witnessed strawberry creek like the alonies mission creek being driven deeper and deeper and deeper underground looking for a safe place to hide as sniveling greedy hypocrites worked hard at looking all pitiful boohooed and tried to to look like they were pushing tears aside in denial of their own treacherous handiwork then had the nerve to curse the desiccated blandness of the land and the floods of madness that brought about the nothingness of droughts a soulless duplication of the dryness of arrogance as own lack of humanity and imagination a continuous saga a red bankrupt driver the arithmic dance that comes from worship and dollars and a complete disrespect of common sense greed wrapped itself from head to foot mass the sterile suicidal shame in their own self pity and were so unbelievably busy feeling sorry for themselves that they completely lost sight of the fact that they were only a small part of life they were so self-absorbed that they never even noticed the resilient reappearance of the beauty of clouds or that little ignored drop award you know the one that refused to give up the ghost mama's stubborn little do drop cute little thing just jumped up and gave a tiny blade of thirsty grass just the right amount of courage to break through the concrete remind us all this too shall pass mom in nature has already paid the course and even though she sometimes gets confused let's go and loses control she knows she's mama she knows the earth is her home and these days she's spending all her time getting ready to stay ready in anticipation of mankind's next display of foolishness regardless of whether we're ready to accept the ramifications of humanity's actions or inactions she knows i say mama knows she's always known in no uncertain terms earth is her take i say earth is her turf and it's nature's nature to always reclaim what's hers messages one of her babies and even history won't miss you and there's nothing worse than the angry mother's fury nature is one of those over-protective kind of mamas that almost never plays a mama that will always let you know she would much rather hold you but if you push her too hard she'll fight think twice before you act unwisely unless you think your conscious is strong enough to handle the loss because when nature takes she takes it all big mamas temper tantrums have been known to turn heaven and hell inside out before you can blink your eyes so while there's still a chance to do more than just think find what's left of common sense in your heart be an unwavering example of peace and harmony moving productively and gracefully through life like a dew drop we're going to lose big time this time we're going to lose it all in the long run the old girl always wins that's the way it's always been that's the way the story always goes she's mama big mama and mother nature is always boss okay um i've been in awe of trees ever since i was a little girl and uh and uh so this is a tribute to them is called in praise of the magnificent gifts of trees and i guess i should say also this was sort of triggered off listening to one of the more um intelligent self-appointed messiahs of uh of uh intelligentsia talking about us worrying about all these inanimate objects who obviously have no conscience and don't realize that it's all alive we're just like a little pebble in a big big big sea here but anyway that's a whole other thing so it's called in praise of the magnificent gifts of trees sitting here eyes held captive by the presence of your example you i say you an unacknowledged sacred elder your quiet wisdom and the stoic beauty of your stillness or stillness that mass and ageless magnificence a deliberate immeasurable slow dance in contrast with the unapologetic wildness of your leaves beautiful leaves radiant leaves boldly breathing leaves dancing in the wind breathing cleansing the air cooling clouds and the rain and water to drink while you quietly stand there giving you all asking nothing silently working overtime trying to rectify the wreckage of humanity's stupidity and its consistent inhumane assault on the balance of existence a suicidal out of control blinded by profit death march humanity is a creature so smart that it's outsmarted itself blinded by arrogance and so drunk on delusions of their own superiority they're completely unaware that they are only a tiny off-key note in the universal symphony of life but they care less about the rest of the planet or creation or us unless there's something seriously bankable in it proudly and arrogantly strutting around unaware of your importance or the fact that you even the here or or there and everywhere they can't see you're more than just another tree more than just one more inanimate object so you stand there an involuntary witness watching mankind blindly digging its own grave as you do your best to repair the air trying to save humanity from itself i was listening to the news a couple of weeks ago cbs and to be exact and they were talking about folks are feeling very good about the thought that they're going to colonize Mars and then she had the nerve to say think of all the real estate i do hope the Martians or whatever beings are out there take care of them and i wish they would just go i kind of like this place or let them all go and then whatever is left here we can take care of it you know and hopefully whatever creatures or consciousness exists out there can take care of them because i have to please go fast anyway i wrote this after hurricane Katrina i just finished reading a poem and another poetry reading about Katrina but this is about when uh maria tore up the Caribbean in Puerto Rico and it completely decimated uh el junque it decimated the whole island but azunque the rainforest it reduced the splinters and uh and i saw pictures and i almost had a nervous breakdown because you know people say oh it'll grow back yeah sure it will a couple of thousand years that's what it's going to take to replace that and folks say well no this is just a natural thing what you see what you calling hurricanes and and what have this is not natural i grew up going to that island almost every summer and hurricanes with hurricane would come you party you have a good time until it's over what's happening is the result of the balance of nature being completely thrown off kilter that is not normal the storms that we're having now are not normal when i first moved to california used to rain every day for a couple of months and we all complained because we were dumb then of course we have seven years of drought and then this onslaught of these weird rains that we're having so that what happened with maria and all this other stuff is sad anyway when i saw those pictures uh i originally wrote this to keep myself saying it's called a simple freedom or was it just a dream excuse me once upon a time when the world was green when this earth was heaven the trees used to sing to us and we sang their praises dance and honor their beauty and reveled in the millions of gifts they gave us life was a simple but complicated symphony when lovesick leaves sang and romanced hungry wind spirits and clouds pregnant with the promise that tomorrow kept us drunk on the sweet wine of her reigns then came the invasion would eating devils that make termites look like angels the lakes the streams the green all gone forest of dreams destroyed the simple beauty of millions of yesterday's eaten by greed and lifelessly regurgitated into the ravaged soil as echoes of green cry in the shadows of what once was tree spirits hidden behind ancestral tombstones their seedless offspring roam thirsty deserts beside invisible uprooted generations trying to remember days when nature rained and all her green gave the world oxygen to breathe and got the world drunk on the fruit of their love days when trees romanced the clouds and rain was the wine of heaven now their ghost silent these scream wide awake nightmares restless spirits hidden in the sands of a long ago time a time before they came like an atonal swarm of hungry locusts suicidal wood eating demons that looked like angels but took joy and the devastation of uprooted generations in the destruction of sacred medicinal flowers that once perfumed the air and now the lakes the streams the green all gone in their place grow tearful memories echo echoes crying echoes dancing in the weeds with hurricanes and earthquakes shadows of days when this earth was heaven when happiness was being able to safely lie in the grass and just breathe and be serenaded by a chorus of singing frogs and birds it was a simple priceless freedom it was just a dream once upon a time when the world was green if it's okay can i do two more right can i do two more can i do two more okay this first one is shorter than and then another one this is called it only takes a minute and i hope that folks listen because i mean this is crazy i'm very proud to see this like groups like in the east bay there's a group they call a relief re le af the planting trees all over like their little johnny apple seed folks and uh there's folks that are giving trees to people to plant and i'm so proud i saw a thing this gentleman in india by himself planted over 2 000 trees in his ear he's like that's what i call a hero you know and anything that we can do to turn this stuff around you know uh all these bees that have disappeared we better be scared because if they go we go that's serious very serious what we're living with but anyway it's called it only takes a minute stop say stop listen listen to the wind when she's whispering to you does she have to knock you down for you to hear stop listen listen to the silence in the spaces where honey bees used to dance and if you listen with an open heart you just might hear creation singing and find the courage to rewrite the script and take a long overdue stand stop listen mother nature is offering you a chance listen return to the balance of big mama's plan it only takes a minute and you better stop and listen of course you're on nature's clock and she's not playing and time is rapidly running out this last thing i want to do is a piece i wrote to el junque and um whether it's el junque which is very small rainforest by comparison to the big mama down there the amazon and what have you all all rainforests are really important they produce over 70 percent of the oxygen this world needs they also please about 90 percent of the medicines that you take oh he should say they produced it before they knocked down most of the rainforest so whatever you can do to save the rainforest please please please do uh this is called listen to the rain i don't have my rain stick but i hope you got good imaginations and you hear rain the rainforest is so unbelievable you can plant a seed and come back in the afternoon if you plant that seed in the morning you'll see a sprout they're just remarkable unbelievably vibrant places that that are like nothing else anyway this is called listen to the rain el junque jardín de esperanza donde vive el alma boricua el alma de la peña del caribe el señor gringo he always listens but never hears the music of el junque too busy always rushing running taking breaking always taking but never taking time enough to listen to the rain to hear her sacred song to feel the magic the magic el junque gritando sangre de la floris el llanto del coquise they came i said it came suffering acute gringoitis of the bank account they will never know el junque is more than just another rainforest more than just a beautiful tourist trap more than just one more romantic locale with more great potential for the cultural expansion of mcdonald's bulletproof hamburgers listen boricua have you ever stopped and listened to the rain the magic el junque sagrado oración de la lluvia corazon de la tierra pesadilla del sjankis listen boricua listen listen to the rain el junque is a fertility dance is borenke's poem of power don pedro don yolulita don juan antonio tried to make you hear tried to make you feel strong enough to live for a tree and maybe even die to be free did you hear them the magic el junque sombra de aneloses condiz de renacimiento del sueño borincano listen listen listen listen boricua listen to the rain let her whisper in your ears let her shower your proud let her overwhelm you with her beauty let her lead you to the magic el junque is nature's declaration of independence at the rhythm of the rain burning like fire in your blood have you ever really stopped and listened to the rain boricua listen listen listen have you ever really stopped you better listen to the rain boricua listen listen ah el sonido sonido musical de la lluvia borinke and listen boricua listen to the rain you better listen to the rain stop and listen to the rain listen listen listen thank you for listening to my words everybody a hand in the library this library has been so wonderful all of us i've got books and everybody else over here has books please take one of them home with you i take one of all of our books home i'll also say thank you to everybody for coming and thank you for the thank you to the library for hosting this um poets you are all terrific um many of the poets have books for sale at the table over here um and poets uh please uh don't leave until we get a group picture thanks