3...2...1...we have liftoff!

 If you have never been to Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, here's what greets you when you first walk in: 

Apart from serving the planet's best chai and housing an astonishing collection of books and spiritual items, Open Secret is a richly welcoming venue for events such as...poetry book launches! Imagine my delight to find myself launching my new collection there last Friday night in front of an audience of friends and friendly strangers. The room was not this full or tidy, but here's what it kind of looked like:

There were poems. There were slides to accompany them. There was wine, cheese, fruit, and weird coconutty snack things. I read for nearly an hour, phenomenally long for me. I sold many more books than usual. You could say the evening was a big success, but that would be an understatement for me. 

This was the culmination of about ten years of planning between me and my friend Connie Shaw. She owns and runs Sentient Publications, Boulder. Now she is my U.S. editor/publisher (I still publish in Ireland with The Gallery Press). We have fun with this. I call her Ed, she suggests outrageous places we could fly to for readings. We planned this book on beaches, on planes, in bars and ice-cream parlors and Russian tea houses. And now we have done it, launched it, celebrated it, and even started selling it. This is beyond fun!

Below is the first poem I read on Friday night. It's about the government shutdown of October 2013. I've added a couple of the slides I projected as I read it.

Shutdown

The day the government shut down

the ocean showed up for work.

They put some barricades up

but waves kept coming in, unfazed.

The toilets were locked

and the barricades went up

to stop the people coming in to the park

but we went early, before they closed

the National Seashore, and I can attest

that the seals and the pelicans

and the small fish and the birds that eat them

kept coming back for more.

The waves were giving it their all,

rending the heart of the beach in two,

throwing their violent weight around

while Congress ran aground;

the rush of foam and fuming toil

of the wind blowing spume back

from the crests as loud as the silence

along the corridors of power,

the sand hot beneath our feet,

the water silvery gold, the gulls

laughing and crying as we were

laughing and crying too.

Pelicans flew as low as they dared

we reckoned they hadn't heard

that the government was hung -

hoist by its own petard -

that they'd put some wooden barriers up

to stop the tourist cars

from visiting the National Seashore

while well beneath the roar of the breakers

tearing up the shale

and the keening wail of the gulls

the day was a good day, ungoverned,

lovely, full of miracles.