Bay Area Stew
Poetry
Islais Creek
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Training for a race, running in the hot sun, past baseball crowds and desolate waterfronts, I finally cross the bridge over the muddy lifeless waters of Islais Creek. A breeze blows through rusting fences and homeless camps, hidden amid the barren shores of dying trees and bushes draped with petrified cobwebs. Empty warehouses and two derelict copra cranes—reminders of industries left behind in time. I stop and look across the waters. A forgotten world at the edge of the City, filled with secrets and sadness. It might have been the wind. A voice echoed along the ripples of warm air.
It was The Old Woman of The Sea, a Salinan voice. The Wise One, who taught the others about their world, their Story of Creation, when the Morning Star fell from the Heavens. Her whispers grew faint, remembering the men who came to Is-Lay to kill the waters. “What shall we do?” her people asked,
NOTE: Islais Creek was the main and thriving water source for San Francisco in 1890, a city of 300,000 people. The mismanagement of Islais with land reclamation, slaughterhouse industries that polluted the waters and the insidious displacement of the Native Americans who had lived here hundreds of years before the White Man came, resulted in a shadow creek where nothing lives.
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