the end of the world is the start of a poem

(April 2023. San Francisco, hiking in the Presidio just east of the Golden Gate Bridge. As the kids say, we’re so back. Big Whitman references here for the scholars; particularly the GOATed Section 46 of Song of Myself (https://poets.org/poem/song-myself-46) and the phrasing of the sun as ‘half an hour high’ from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45470/crossing-brooklyn-ferry). Love the way this is in dialogue with Whitman on the other side of the continent 200 years ago, yet also in dialogue with the Bay Area scene in the 2020’s, particularly fears of AGI apocalypse and the purported eclipsing of the humanities by large language models. Of course, I feel the death of the humanities to be greatly exaggerated.)

the end of the world is the end of a poem

a line, a universe of our own—
four dimensional and everything more

nearing land’s end the sun still behind
a hill but i believe the sun is still
half an hour high

time to hit the trail. there is still time
and moving—
i will only ever see the sun set today

so i dear son will shoulder my duds
this heavy pack & all the weight of my
past
stride from this spot just before the golden
gate
surrounded by preciousness in improbable
green

and the sound of birds thrumming high air
closer to ear’s skin than the roar of cars
far to and from the north along the bridge,
man spanning the gap between
mountains and the widening blue—

the end of the world is the start of a poem