Ghandi and a City Bridge, July

Perhaps it's just me but I found it odd that his statue is here. Ghandi standing behind the San Francisco Ferry Building, blessing the day's horizon and wire span of the suspension bridge that broke once with earthquake. Did I miss something? Did he journey here once, to this wharf where today there is a market housed in the one-time passenger hall of metal and glass, people standing in long lines for Peet's Coffee, lines no deterrent to one in need of matcha or espresso or chai, patiently texting their lover or boss?

Ghandi is thin as ever, his stride here, a wishing bone. A single hand raised, scooping out solutions or simply waving in benediction, hailing wind for the damp ride for boat travelers en route to Sausalito or safe passage for automobiles on the distant bridge passing through the mountain of Yerba Buena. It was only due to my impatient walk out to the fringe of tea hawkers and cheese barkers that I discovered this halo of a man, prince of non-violent reaction, leaning ever forward into the foggy future with his stick like a straightened sine wave. His face is streaked with pigeon dung which momentarily gives me reason to, somewhat embarrassed, glance up and around to see if anyone else finds this life-sized trinket of endurance oddly placed here among the façades of buildings like stacked wedding cakes. But no one else seems aware as they lunch here daily with Mohandas, I suppose, where the wounded birds convene seeking scraps, ruffling and unruffling, cooing as ever. I read that his spectacles have been vandalized five times and see that they are missing again; a section of his staff gone too but architects believe this is a result of stress on the bronze cast.

But here he stands, endlessly forgiving, and I return to the once functional building transformed today for commerce, and buy a bottle of beer, a small loaf of sourdough, to wait for my daughter to return to our meeting place. A bell rings somewhere. Ferries come and go.

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