Belated Thanks to Lawrence Ferlinghetti
by David Bachner

During winter break my freshman year of college
I bought A Coney Island of the Mind.

Reading it, over and over, night after night,
I was carried into a whole new way

of seeing and feeling, a new way
of thinking about poetry.

And still she dances
dances still
and still she comes
at me
with breathing breasts
and secret lips
and (ah)
bright eyes…

In 1969, suffering a doomed graduate school stint
at Berkeley, I would escape across the Bay

to browse in Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore.
I could never summon up the nerve to approach

the store’s famous owner and thank him
for his book’s impact on me.

Then I thought of sending him a letter.
In the end, I did neither.

The volume I bought in 1962 remains, though,
shelved always close to my desk

to read whenever my…