Three years
( or maybe four )
have moved beneath the San Francisco wreckers
and their yard-long hammers.
Their caterpillar treads that transform brick
to dust-red powder.
Those giant cranes
that slice a roof down
with a single swing.
Some have never known the wreckers' rattle.
Those houses on Pacific that march toward
posterity
restored by dilettantes from Jackson Square
painted up like aging actresses
with eye-shadow windows and rouge-red doors.
Some have had collections taken up
petitions passed from hand to hand.
Their widows walks scraped free of dirt
and green grass planted where the weeds once grew.
These houses almost shiny new
that crowd Nob Hill
and marched down Lombard in a row
were saved to show the glory of the past.
There was a house on Stanyan street
that took a single day to wreck
and that includes an hour spent
at tin-pail lunch on sandwiches and beer.
They carted off the timber and sold it by the pound.
The bricks at least, ten cents a piece,
now make a Marin garden wall.
But there is little salvage to be had
in bent and broken nails
and things that might have been
if I'd had wiser eyes
or been a fisherman
in blue.