I walked on the banks of the tin can banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a southern pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the snarled steel roots of trees and machinery.

The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sank onto pot final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mountains, just ourselves and rheumy-eyed and hung over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.

Look at the sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust –

I rushed up enchanted – it was my first sunflower,

Memories of Blake – my visions.

Lizy Snowden