Kudos to Nils Peterson, co-founder of Poetry Center San Jose, for completing his first project as Santa Clara County Poet Laureate. His epic poem "A Family Album, Santa Clara County, 2009" was unveiled by the County on June 23,2009. The following morning of June 24, 2009, the Poet Laureate read the poem “as an invocation” at the meeting of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors held at the County Government Center on 70 West Hedding Street, San Jose.
In the words of the Poet himself, he describes his poem as “a collage, a gathering of verbal snapshots, an album, of the Santa Clara County family…You’ll find joy and sadness here, exuberance and wistfulness, more than a little seasoning of anger. Yet, what surprised me a little is how much we still think of our county as beautiful. It made me look around and see it still is.”
As Karen D’Souza of the Mercury News quoted the Poet Laureate, a professor emeritus at San Jose University and a very well-respected poet in the community, “This poem captures the heights and the depths of life in Silicon Valley.”
Here are excerpts from A Family Album, Santa Clara County, 2009 as published by the San Jose Mercury News on June 24, 2009. The entire poem as published by the Office of the Santa Clara County Poet Laureate can be viewed in PDF at the link provided under ADDITIONAL LINKS: A Family Album, Santa Clara County, 2009 .
EXCERPTS FROM A FAMILY ALBUM SANTA CLARA COUNTY, 2009
“What shall we call our creation? A poem doesn’t seem quite right, though clearly there is poetry in it. I think of it as a collage, a gathering of verbal snapshots, an album of the Santa Clara County family.
“The poets are listed at the bottom of each section in the order of their appearance.”
–Nils Peterson, Poet Laureate, Santa Clara County
WORK
My day begins as the owl comes home for sleep.
Exhausted I drive home in single file four lanes wide.
Workers swarm to the smell of the midnight taco truck.
Evening on 101 is like a dancing dragon.
Laid-off, got job—hummingbirds are back at my feeder.
Uprooted to jobs here, not quite fitting in ever.
Field workers and roots became tech workers and wires.
Poets: Jackie Coffin, Merribea Berry, Daniel Tran, Hoa Nguyen, Manu Rao, Yoo-Yoo Yeh, Al Reynolds
PEOPLE
Bus stop. Story Road, man wants to go somewhere.
Chess parents, waiting: some friendly, some not.
I grab one ripe lemon from the tree and run.
High tech, low riders, and everything in between.
Neighbors barbecue wafts smoke tendrils. Can I come too?
I have grown accustomed to people talking to themselves.
Their neighbors could never tell when they were there.
Poets: Christine Richardson, Leigh Klotz, Mary Langenbrunner, Dorothy Reller, Marianne Salas, Bret-Jordan Kreiensieck, Clair Schuur
OUR LIVES
Morning awakes with the chippering of birds.
My morning paper, THE MERC, shrinking, shrinking.
We import smart people: Prop 13killed our schools.
Talk slows, twitter grows, clicks impede our skill to read.
High tech hotbed covered with liberal comforters.
Thousands of dot-com paper millionaires once roamed free.
Poets: Regina Esparza, Gloria Elizabeth, Arthur Keller, Pat Kreitz. Clysta McLemore, Larry White
WHAT WAS LOST
Low water at Lexington: the ghost road to Alma.
Where trees grew in formation, information reigns.
My father’s tractor billowing dust, now 280 covered.
Sunnyvale cherry orchard is now Starbucks.
Dwindled island of mustard grass, still ablaze.
The old timers all say this valley was paradise.
Poets: Ken Weisner, Judith Ogus, Clarice Mazzanti, Gordon Garb, Dennis Noren, Dennis Richardson
WHAT’S HERE
I thought it would be almost like Kansas, but it’s not.
Home of garlic fog, traffic bog, and many who jog.
Sometimes the earth shakes beneath our feet.
A hint of garlic seasons the morning fog.
Showers—what I once called drizzle.
Poets: Annie Deckert, Gwen Hacker, Dawn Haskins, Bonnie Home, Martha Sterne
THE LOOK OF OUR PLACE
A broom left on the gray shingle root: bright blue handle.
Honeysuckle vines like stained glass etched on Bird Street home.
Wild poppy bouquet rooted in the rough sidewalk crack.
Poets: Stephanie Pressman, Pushpa MacFarlane, C Flanders
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