From Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”

“Honey”

Susan Sharman
The Daily Fabric Exhibit
Benicia Library
Sept 2016

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Poets’ Picnic

Today I went to First Street Park in Benicia for the Poets’ Picnic with my mother, artist Barbara Holthuis. Poet Laureates from cities all over the Bay read their poems and the poems they drew from baskets that had been filled by Benicia writers involved in the First Tuesday Poets. The group meets monthly at the Benicia Library.

Hearing these poems, I was reminded of when I lived in Alexandria, Virginia and participated in the Live Poets of Alexandria. The group met regularly at the Alexandria Public Library. Some of the poems I wrote then eventually became a core part of my first poetry collection, Sanctuary. 

Poet Laureates

Ronna Leon (Benicia), Deborah Grossman (Pleasanton), Janell Moon (Emeryville), Elaine Butts (San Ramon), Mary Rudge (Alameda), Juanita Martin (Fairfield), Joel Fallon (Benicia), Ruth Blakeney (Crockett), Cynthia Bryant (Pleasanton), Ronnie Holland (Dublin), Parthenia Hicks (Los Gatos), Gary Silva (Napa County), Sally Ashton (Santa Clara County), Robert Shelby (Benicia), Cher Wollard (Livermore), Allegra Silberstein (Davis), Connie Post (Livermore)

Organizer Ronna Leon, current Poet Laureate of Benicia, had a “Poem Home” where all listeners in today’s audience could pick up a poem to take home with them. Mine was by Theresa Whitehill of Ukiah.

“Gates of Winter”

The two gates of winter are guarded by the dead. All

Hallows’ Eve in early November

and Memorial Day when summer is allowed to leak

itself out into free air. Death by love, by life, by reason

on the one side, death by patriotism, by ideals, by

economy on the other.

We stand and feed the dead in order to fend off winter

and to banish it, to free ourselves of ornamental

limits. We feed the dead our memories and our

sorrows, with barbecues and sweets, with a holiday

dedicated to softening bones over a fire, chocolates

wrapped in iridescent foil. But what is it the dead

actually savor, what’s delectable once you’ve

divided yourself in two and no longer have to stand

on the hill imagining wisdom?

I have been listening to the dead and find them

difficult. They are not as articulate

as they could be. What is it that sets their skin

aflame, that causes them to flutter their eyelids

half open with helpless desire? I would think it would be

flowers, and babies, and the more expensive kind

of soap bubbles, red objects, fireworks, swooning,

those things inescapably fertile and passing. We are

this planet’s goodbye and its trident. We know how to

feed things, spirits and loneliness, structural steel

and alphabets, now we must learn somehow

to be fed.

Theresa Whitehill

(2011)

On the Benicia Pier after the Poets’ Picnic

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