The Brooklyn Rail

I met Neeli within the folded shadow
of Coit Tower, atop a bed of flowers
& other poets with ecstatic shouts of Ginsberg.
I met Neeli, really, with a question
that begins an elegy, what did it mean?
to bring again, to breathe, to carry
a pocketful of wolves huddled in a circle.

I may have met Neeli in Herod’s Palace
in Jerusalem, or at least a desire for Neeli
between its massive white marble, freshly cut
from the rock, and its later rebel remnants.
Yes, there, at the center of silver and gold
still twinkling in the eyes of a rock pigeon
I met the seeds of Neeli.

In a jar, like fireflies on the brink of lighting,
the seeds of Neeli and his wishes to be a dead poet,
with Charlie Parker playing in my head
and another page flipped toward revelations.
A generation cataloged & encompassed in poetry,
Neeli, the drunken boat as witness, as food carrier
for good poets, yet still marveled by a sunset.

Did I meet Neeli outside of Vesuvio’s on Columbus Ave
in North Beach, with poets Scott Bird, Aggie Falk,
Dana F. Smith, after reading poems in honor of Jack
Hirschman at City Light Books, before talking poetry,
politics, national and international over coffee,
while Neeli thumbed over the edges of a new translation
of The Bible? It is new. It is familiar.

I met Neeli in a gust of alien wind watching
strands of his hair, break free from beneath beret
like kites from hatchling spiders catching
spring current in sungleam from Bernal Hill towards
the ocean, searching for a part of the coast
wildly at peace, where the grass rustles
near cliff sides and wave churn and gull call.

When there wasn’t enough time, I met Neeli
between the strike of a match
and match ignition, a hint of smoke,
a tea mug nearly empty, last lukewarm swill,
the unfurling of a story quilt over what does it mean
to be a poet? I meet Neeli in every overcast sky
above a San Francisco canyon. The truth is rarely

pure and never simple. I met Neeli, and I meet Neeli
like date palm sprouting after 2,000 year old
seeds are dug up in the Judean desert. Neeli,
like Yakamochi waking from a dream, groping
for nothing. Neeli, tenderly prying open a box
of butterflies to count them. When I first met Neeli,
it was in the mirror, which is how he met me.

Now, Neeli whispers the truth as a dear friend:
it is only the living who make up words
like “living,” like “death,” like “the end.”