Cannery Row 1969
There is nothing to grate,
No stink, but the quality
Of light filters still through thin
Spaces between was and is.
The rickety dock is long-gone,
Replaced by a wharf, some
Token boats close by, a bar
And theatre where daily
Nostalgia plays matinees.
The sardines fished out,
Then the cans and canners.
The windows followed
Cracked, broken, gone.
The cannots and do nots
Settled in, sediments in
The emptiness that filled what
Was left, the lost, the hippies
The indigent. Whoever it was who
Wanted to be a specter settled
Into ghost town Cannery Row,
An aquarium of craft shops
Where penumbra of past presents
The sun as the cure for whatever ails,
Just as it had salt-cured the metal
Patinaed sheets that hang askew
Breaking the breezes from the bay.
Prayer flags flutter in doorways.
Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. His poems have appeared in many magazines over a period of fifty-five years. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.
There is nothing to grate,
No stink, but the quality
Of light filters still through thin
Spaces between was and is.
The rickety dock is long-gone,
Replaced by a wharf, some
Token boats close by, a bar
And theatre where daily
Nostalgia plays matinees.
The sardines fished out,
Then the cans and canners.
The windows followed
Cracked, broken, gone.
The cannots and do nots
Settled in, sediments in
The emptiness that filled what
Was left, the lost, the hippies
The indigent. Whoever it was who
Wanted to be a specter settled
Into ghost town Cannery Row,
An aquarium of craft shops
Where penumbra of past presents
The sun as the cure for whatever ails,
Just as it had salt-cured the metal
Patinaed sheets that hang askew
Breaking the breezes from the bay.
Prayer flags flutter in doorways.
Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. His poems have appeared in many magazines over a period of fifty-five years. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.