(This column first appeared in the Benicia Herald on Sept. 16, 2011.)

In 1969 I was an illustrator for the University of California, Berkeley at their Sanitary Engineering Research Lab at the Richmond Field Station, Richmond, California. It was the dawn of the Environmental Age, I had a great job, and I was a happy camper. I was also freelancing evenings from my home in Concord and listening to a LOT of Neil Diamond. He had a popular song at that time, “Solitary Man,” and in it was the line, “Don’t know that I will, but until I can find me…” The internal rhyme of “will” and “until” just blew me away…the entire song was made up of a series of internal rhyming pairs and I loved it…I had discovered poetry in popular songwriting; I had never studied poetry before since minimally in high school or grammar school and it was awesome!
The routes to work those years were many: I could take Highway 4 or go through Franklin Canyon the old way, or I could take Highway 24, then up through Berkeley and the campus; picking up art supplies on University Avenue, then down to 80 and north to the Field Station. This particular day it was colder than BeeJesus and chose the Berkeley route and I was up near fraternity/sorority row when I had an urgency to write. Having been a student and grad student there I pulled over and wrote:

Berkeley October

A Berkeley girlie
with frosted cheek,
who looked my way
though as not to speak.
And a campus gardener
with hand held rigid,
numbed to the bone
by water frigid,
that splashed
to a concrete walk.
I came, I saw, and I went.

October came and went that year and the first rains of the season occurred in November. I was entering the lab through the back door from the parking lot when I noticed I was tracking in mud. So when I got to my drawing board I wrote:

November

Tan, leather boots that once felt
the heat and sweat of summer,
that later carried
the brown dust of autumn
now are to be found
tracking mud down the hallways
bringing in a reminder
that the rainy season has just begun.
Droplets run from the toe
forming a slurry at the bottom
where the autumn’s dust
has met with the early rain.
And the leaves hanging
from the eucalyptus,
refreshed by the early rain
seem cautious of the months to come.
November has well begun.

Shortly thereafter, one of my favorite customers, Professor Clarence Goleuke came into my office, just ecstatic and gave me a copy of that month’s “Compost Science Digest.” His scientific paper on “Recycling of Chicken Manure Waste” or “Clearing Algae from Clear Lake,” (I’ve forgotten which) was published in it and my illustration was on the cover! He high-fived me, gave me my copy, and went on his way to jabber with his colleagues. Still being a Neil Diamond fan who had Gold Records on HIS wall, I looked at my copy with some disappointment and wrote:

The Compost News Blues

Rockets and vessels
and algae stew,
these are the things
that I once drew.
Didn’t make Life,
nor the cover of TIME,
but the Compost News
had a cover of mine.
Ten thousand copies
went through the mail,
a shower of glory,
or was it hail?
No Golden Record
upon my wall,
but the Compost News
hangs there for all.
No, I didn’t make Life
nor the cover of TIME,
but the Compost News…
thinks I’m divine…

After a few years there, we had a change of directors and things got pretty austere…my employment was over and I moved on to my own graphics and design office in Walnut Creek not far from Highway 24 with great access to a growing number of customer/clients in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. In a hurry to get to one of those in Oakland one day, just west of the Caldecott Tunnel, the friendly, watchful eyes and flashing lights of the CHP could be seen in my rearview mirror. After the always warm and friendly salutations of the day and necessarily transacted paperwork, I sat beside the highway, realizing that MOST, larger firms than me were currently writing and producing their Annual Reports for the year and it was a FINE TIME there on the shoulder of Highway 24 to write mine also:

First Annual Report of Sorts

The ups and the downs
and the all-arounds,
some high-rolling,
seat of the pants operation,
my office in my boots,
my stock is a handful
of sweat and frenzy,
and creation is my bonus.
And some Mr. Policeman
is waving thine hands,
and is telling me
that I gotta slow down,
else he gonna clip
my wings and he does
and now I gotta walk,
but not on water.
Not yet.

Time and circumstances flew by and I landed in Benicia in 1983, happy to be a quiet camper until a group in town wanted to Zap the Lido, the Jurgensen’s Old Corner Saloon on First and A Streets that was boarded up and slowly sinking into the mud. I objected and formed a group to “Save the Lido” and we did. It was bought by the Werblow family a few years later and moved to the corner of First and West D Streets where it is now a gorgeous building offering shops and upstairs offices. But in the early 1990s, it was up on blocks on A Street, minus its lower floor, awaiting the days of its happier future. So I wrote:

Bottom Back

“All I want is my bottom back,”
said the bordello to the chief.
“All I want is my bottom back,
and I could get me a little relief.
Standing here on First Street,
with only an upper floor,
if I could get my bottom back,
I could open my own front door!”

Peter Bray lives, works, and writes in Benicia and has written this column since 2008.