The Sun Sets on Alcatraz

Driving the Bay Bridge into San Francisco

I am still thunderstruck by the sky—red and violet 

twilight dragging Venus into view,  

whitecaps that capture the darkening light, 

the last ferry from Alcatraz calling it a night. 

And I still feel strangely haunted 

by the men locked on that floating rock,

shipwrecked and incarcerated  

by walls of waves and a fog-covered 

Golden Gate never to be touched. 

I’ve heard every tale of the tortures— 

chocolate from the Ghirardelli factory 

mixed and folded into the air, 

the scent carried off the coast 

to sugar the iron bars and cell walls.  

On clear summer days and evenings 

you could hear the world going on without you,

young laughter lifted off the piers, 

Big Band music swelling in bars, 

the distant clang of a cable car.  

And this is where the traffic always slows 

with people like me taking in the spectacle

of Earth and ocean turning to face the dark.

This is where I see everything I’ve wanted

and everything I am afraid to lose.  

James J. Siegel is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of the poetry collections The God of San Francisco (Sibling Rivalry Press) and How Ghosts Travel, which was a finalist for an Ohioana Library Award. He is the host and curator of the monthly Literary Speakeasy show at Martuni’s piano bar in San Francisco, which has been running for over nine years. His poems have been featured in several journals and anthologies, including the Cortland Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, HIV Here & Now, Foglifter, Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men On Their Muses, and more.