“Driving a cardboard automobile without a license
at the turn of the century
my father ran into my mother
on a fun-ride at Coney Island
having spied each other eating
in a French boardinghouse nearby
And having decided right there and then
that she was for him entirely
he followed her into
the playland of that evening
where the headlong meeting
of their ephemeral flesh on wheels
hurtled them forever together
And I now in the back seat
of their eternity
reaching out to embrace them"
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "A Far Rockaway of the Heart, 2"
When Ferlinghetti died earlier this year, not only San Francisco but all of poetry lost its mad-cap voice. His poems were form-inspired, feisty, funny and grounded all at once - the voice of a lunatic cavorting under a spectacular and solemn moon.
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