Retro Poetry for National Poetry Month: U Can Only Drink Rainbows in SSF

April, people say remind them of certain things like death and taxes. But in the world of magic, whimsy, creativity —April is National Poetry Month.

This April, I’ve a 30 day challenge to write a poem every day to honor the late Jack Foley , a legendary Bay Area poetry radio host at KPFA for 50 years who used to send me a new poem he created every week. Also , the current USA Poet Laureate Albert Sze was our poetry faculty at Napa Writing Conference 20+ years ago. (See author’s previous post.)

Some residents asked about my poem “You can only drink Rainbows in South San Francisco.” An excerpt of the poem was published in the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook column in 1996. The Chronicle was bombarded with poems from other cities for almost two months, the reason if the newspaper published a poem about SSF city , why not their city. The Chronicle published some selected short poems about their city. My friend Virginia submitted a short clip “Give us this day our Daly City bread “, was not selected.

Two sketch illustrations (see photo section) of Elizabeth Nisperos poem You can Only Drink Rainbows in South San Francisco excerpt published at SF Chronicle in 1996. A printed newspaper page was displayed at the old SSF Public Library near Westborough. I remember the ending of the poem

“Two and half miles away you can see the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco/But you can only drink rainbows in South San Francisco/and order one directly from your window.”
The illustrations in the photo section show that you can order a rainbow “To Go:a classic,sunset, double,extra vivid, pastel, surprise me.”
Truth be told I don’t even remember the whole poem, I can only remember a few verses. I might have to go the SSF Historical Museum at 80 Chestnut St. It has a copy of my three page poem and the music sheet of “Time Stands Still on South San Francisco Hills.”

When SSF became the global “biotech hub”, newer residents wanted to remove the “Industrial City” because this is now the 21st century of DNA research no longer the Industrial Revolution but they couldn’t because the Sign Hill was designated as a Federal protected Historic site. Remember the Titanic, when a gigantic iceberg hit the ship, the ship’s steel cracked because it was brittle. The steel mills at SSF found a new technology to make steel flexible so when big objects hit the steel it flexes to make only a dent not crack. It was noted the steel mills of SSF helped built USA Navy battleships to win World Wars, hence Sign Hill sign is historically significant.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission and the Historical Society of SSF efforts to preserve the sign prevailed, it was added to the National Register of Historical Places in 1996.It was also approved by the City Council.

And part of the poetic challenge this National poetry month , I’d created a new poem for my city.

South San Francisco : The Industrious City

The City circuits have changed; no longer steel mills and cow pastures

But laboratories of test tubes, Petri dishes & DNA adventures.

The Industrial City is now :

—the industrious city glows where workers dreams of eradicating diseases for global rise health;

Where citizens are healthy, the world becomes wealthy; healthy is wealthy, for when one is healthy , one is happy;

The industrious city sequences nature dreams of carbon,hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen; recombining them into new solutions;

Oxygenating populations , In tomorrow’s light;

The helix in each resident spinning of amazing daring delight;

In laboratories of white coats with hands clasping with prayers—The pipettes, centrifuges, cold storage of molecular formulas

spinning galaxies of faith, hope, love for future generations between hypothesis and experiments,

somewhere lies a cure,an unexpected miracle of light like the resurrection’s light, new medicines arise from the creator invisible hands;

The industrious city, believing in its enduring relentless fight , of becoming—she grows the impossible result,

Behold South San Francisco, San Bruno Mountain that once whispered the Industrial City , proclaims -it has been transformed to the Industrious City.