STEVEN W. BAKER

STEVEN W. BAKER

SUMMER OF LOVE

 (1967, Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco)

It was a perfect day in the Summer of Love

A cool Pacific breeze blowing into the park

Off the Bay, restive in the near distance

The Haight full of people for the weekend

Sun smiling from a washed blue sky.

Where else would anyone want to live?

What time in all of history could be better?

Why not live where fate focuses to a point?

Those were my thoughts as I walked

Through the ropes and knots of compatriots.

I was headed for the famous "Yellow House"

Just across the park and up a little street

Currents of music and smoke blew through

The California air in the very midst of now

And I knew I was part of something historic.

The park was always crowded on Saturdays

Full of hippies, runaways, shysters, clowns

In those days, life seemed to flow freely

From the grass, the trees, from the rooftops

Making the city's grime and sleaze disappear.

Darkness was invisible, under a layer of gold

Sparkling in the sun of young emotion

I couldn't even smell it under the rich aromas

Of hot dogs and tacos and marijuana

As far from my mind as a long lost love.

Some of the park's denizens waved to me

Or asked, "How's it goin', man?" if I was near

It made the city feel like home to be known

Made it feel like the Indiana I'd left behind

Even though it couldn't have been more different.

Which is what endeared the Haight to me

This connection and love for all its failures

As well as the evolution forward I could feel

That seemed to express itself in every smile

What if this were where I'd make my stand?

The "Yellow House" had once been grand

But it hadn't been painted for many years

And had been abandoned almost as long

It's three floors housed quite a few runaways

Though the big first floor was almost empty.

The band I'd been gigging with for a month

Played every Saturday night until early morn

I banged on an old upright piano left there

From saloon days sometime after the Quake

I had tuned it up and fallen in love with it.

My bandmates brought their guitars and amps

Our drummer set up his kit and we would play

The rock songs we mainly wrote ourselves

I often made-up the words as I sang them

Into the old mic somebody's girlfriend owned.

That Saturday afternoon I walked through

The front doorway missing its long-stolen door

Eager to start practice for that night's set

And instantly received a very big shock --

"My" piano had been completely destroyed!

It looked like someone must have used an ax

Or maybe a sledge hammer the night before

They obviously had made some serious noise

For no reason but to obliterate a treasure

My anger mounted, but sadness prevailed.

I would certainly not be playing piano that night

Or any time in the foreseeable future, thank you

The show must go on, so we limped through practice

And the set that night, though it ended early --

Used to a sound, without it, things seemed sad.

I never played in the big, old Yellow House again

Not long after that, they found a runaway girl

Up on the third floor, stabbed ten times, dead

I started thinking about moving on, maybe LA

Where, unknown to me, Ardee waited with love.

The Haight became just another, strange then

Because none of it lasted or became the norm

Except for pockets of hippies here and there

They largely disappeared, along with peace,

Along with the feeling that all men are brothers.

©2016 Steven W. Baker

CAMPFIRE

I'm happy to gather grass, sticks, and logs

For the campfire we are about to build

Trying to avoid chopping my leg like I once did

The evening before my first Mt. Katahdin climb.

I like to have a circle of rocks, but not always

And then, inside, the teepee of tinder and sticks

An ancient design etched into our memories

From long ago and far away fires of survival.

Building the fire makes me think of that past

The sun sinking behind a big black mountain

The day breeze dissolving into night stillness

Darkness and quiet spreading like a quilt.

Calls of the night animals are not like the day's

They have a somber, lost sort of tone to them

A sadness that they are forced to live in the dark

Because the light is even more dangerous.

The match strikes, the small, hungry blaze begins

We sit on a larger circle of rocks or logs

Huddling close as we feed the growing flames

And cold descends rapidly down the mountain.

It's the time of tiredness and peace and hunger

But it will be a while before we can cook

Before the coals or rocks or pans of food

Will be ready to prepare the meal awaited.

Now, for a while, and after cooking and eating

For a longer while, is the time to sit and spin tales

Such as man has always done around the warmth

Watching the flames play and the coals glow.

We talk first of our day and days from the past

While I imagine entering the now roaring fire

Fantasizing some heat-resistant pinpoint presence

That could fly through the caves of burning embers.

It's a lovely ancient thing, the fire, a reminder

Of a beautiful if hard and hungry past for man

When to sit and eat and talk and watch the fire

Were enough, were all we had and all we wanted.

©2016 Steven W. Baker

FLAT EARTH

I don't know why, but I often come across

Things passing strange.

The other day I met a young man

Who was absolutely convinced

The world is flat, not round.

"We are fed lies," he said,

Part of a vast conspiracy

To keep mankind from the truth

Though the motive seemed

To have escaped him.

"There is scientific proof," he said.

"Other men know the truth --

A spinning globe is impossible!"

I couldn't help but speak up

For the poor, maligned roundness.

I spoke of the green flashes I'd seen

The disappearing and appearing masts

Of distant ships I'd watched at sea

With my own eyes and with binoculars

As they climbed up and down

The distant blue horizon of my view.

How storms and whirlpools rotate

In different directions north and south

Of the equator no flat earth could have.

I spoke of the great circles airliners fly

That save them fuel covering the globe

Shunning the straight lines a flat earth

Would invariably require for efficiency,

The eclipses grand, the never setting sun.

He said, "Antarctica circles the world."

I said, "No, it has been circumnavigated."

Simple night and day are impossible

If this silent planet is simply flat.

The sun would never disappear from view

If it circled above a poor flat earth.

But nothing made a dent

In his blind convictions, because

They were drawn from something

He'd read in some faultless book

That could never be called a lie.

The superstition that we are duped

By mysterious, powerful, anonymous men

Including those who never even went

To the cold, lonely moon and returned,

By Copernicus and gallant Galileo Galilei

And every astronomer and scientist since.

An idea "Foolish and absurd in philosophy,

And formally heretical since it explicitly

Contradicts in many places the sense of

Holy Scripture."

A lie told over and over for thousands of years

Does not so easily die.

©2016

Steven W. Baker

STEVEN W. BAKER has essentially lived two lives as a poet — as a college student and shortly after, when he published a lot of work in underground newspapers and obscure journals, most of which are probably now defunct. His second life as a poet began a quarter century later, after he started traveling and living around the world. He has now gathered a large body of unpublished work from this period that was written for himself and his close friends, which he is now publishing. His poems have appeared, among many others publications, in Eat Sleep Write, Silver Birch Press, The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Ty(po-e:tic)us, Pilcrow & Dagger, Spirit Caller Magazine, and Flink.to, where his poem, “Picture of Marigot Bay” won the 2014 Poetry Contest.