WHO I AM IN TWILIGHT

Like John Lee Hooker, like Lightnin Hopkins,
like the blues himself, the trickster sonnet,
hoedown, the tango, the cante jondo,
like blessed spirituals and ragas custom-made,
like novels, like stories, like slick, slow
sly soliloquies sliding into novels,
like Crime & Punishment, like death & birth,
Canal Street, New Orleans, like eased,
erasable, troubled voices a whirling
ceiling fan makes in deep summer nights in
hot unheavenly hotels, Oklahoma, Arkansas,
Tennessee, like the Mississippi River
so deep and wide you couldn’t get a letter
to the other side, like Grand Canyon,
like Yosemite National Park, like beans &
cornbread, like rest & recreation, like love
& like, I know we last. I know our bleeding stops.

-Al Young

2023
Ariel Rubinstein

Plate from Berkeley Poetry Walk

More details can be found here Click for the item in The ultimate street signs site