 Many thanks to the gardeners in this literary tradition. Jack, Byron, Judy, Sarah, Catherine, Aggy too, throw her in the mix. People who have inspired me over the years. The poem I'm about to read is going to appear in my first book coming out in a few weeks called Falling into Flowers. But the poem has a little history of its own. It first was published in a card and married to this iconic photo by Dan Nicoletta, the 20th anniversary of Harvey Milk's memorial. And I'm going to just tell you some exciting news as a preface to me reading the poem. I spoke with Dan and he told me that I could tell you that he has his first book of iconic photographs of San Francisco coming out in the spring. It's going to be called LGBT San Francisco. And his distributor says, Dan started his career as a young photographer working at Harvey Milk's camera store in the heart of the LGBT Mecca and has religiously documented the journey of the LGBT civil rights movement over the last 40 years. The photographs are powerful, they're intimate, and they totally capture this groundbreaking time. This is the first book devoted to Dan's incredible body of work. Yay Dan, look for it. My poem is called Postcard from the Castro and it has an epigraph from Harvey Milk. Two days after I was elected, I got a phone call and the voice was quite young. It was from Altoona, Pennsylvania. And the person said, thanks. If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door. You've got to give them hope, Harvey Milk. And I wrote this poem after a mural was placed on his old, above his old Castro camera store. Harvey Milk is smiling out a window in the Castro again in a new portrait on the side of his old building. Half circle smile, head bowed, looking out through a sliver of sun onto the sidewalk of his old neighborhood. He seems to know something that we don't. Or is his smile just the start of a happy laugh remembering that this gay mecca is named Eureka Valley? Maybe he's simply admiring the beautiful boys holding hands with such nonchalance as they sashay past him, heading toward, does your mother know, on 18th? He has the radiance of someone who sees through hate. From this window on a wall, rainbow flag across his chest, rainbows fluttering from lampposts at every corner. The van Gogh, golds and blues of the mural hang like a load star above his once open to all refuge. His Castro camera store, his first openly gay supervisors campaign office. This hippie community center where I once sat in his old dentist chair, installed like a work of beat art in the middle of his shop floor. I knew him when I did not know who I was. Looking back on the long journey from then to now, his holy disarming comedy silenced by a deadly serious fear spawned loathing. Yet out of that sudden bloody silence, a roar from Altoona, Pennsylvania, San Antonio, Des Moines. I have come here on a pilgrimage from the hate. I'm alive. I'm in love. I'm in hope. I'm out. His image shines like a moon over Castro Street again, but I cannot meet the gaze of his earth cast eyes. If I could, I would say thanks Harvey, having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.