Many of us love the poetry of Bill Trampleasure. This website presents many of them, and will include more over time. The site is maintained by Bill’s son Lee.
To see a complete list of poems, visit the Table of Contents page.
Many of us love the poetry of Bill Trampleasure. This website presents many of them, and will include more over time. The site is maintained by Bill’s son Lee.
To see a complete list of poems, visit the Table of Contents page.
Fly it as a prayer for peace, speed the day when all wars cease. Fly it as a vote for Earth, by a midwife for global government's birth. Fly it as an earthly embrace, give a healing hug to the whole human race. Fly it as a flicker of light, let your hope shine in our nuclear night.
If you’d like to buy a UN flag, I suggest finding your local chapter of the United Nations Association of the USA. Yeah, you can get one on Amazon, but your local chapter of UNA/USA would love to see you.
Finish Reading: Buy and fly the UN flagWould you believe, my lovable, lovely wife— should I leave first, this grace filled sphere of life— that all the words of love I’ve ever written/said can never/ever become dead? For even beyond whatever life they’ll have within your soul, they’ll also always live within whatever cosmic speck or spark becomes my role. Yes, I do believe we both know the truth of this, and deep within our knowing rests one infinite, eternal, sweetheart kiss.
Written by Bill in the 1980s or 1990s
Here is a collection of photos from Bill and Mary Lee’s wedding in 1955.
Our Mother who art the Earth
nurturing is they name.
Thy web of life be woven
Thy way be found within
as it is all about
Thank you this day
for our daily bread
– and sweat
And forgive us our misuse of you
as we forgive those who misuse us
And lead us not into exploitation
but deliver us from lording it over you
and over each other
and over all your creatures
For thine are the waters of life
and the hills, valleys and plains of home
and our breeding, seeding, feeding ground
now
and for as close to forever
as we’ll ever get. Ah! Woman
Bill Trampleasure’s reflections following Friar Francis Baur’s sermon on “The Lord’s Prayer: The Vision of Jesus” First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, California March 15, 1987.
On December 26th, 2019, Bill’s loving wife Mary Lee died peacefully at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland.
Mary Lee had been struggling with memory, vision, and mobility for several years, and was looking forward to her eventual death. You can read more about her at www.caringbridge.org/visit/maryleetrampleasure
Bill and Mary Lee spent much of their marriage without a car, but they did have a VW bus with this license plate for almost twenty years.
If you read the first five letters as one word, you can see what many of Bill’s poetry was about.
Bill Trampleasure was a man of many passions. Whether you knew him through peace, prayer, politics, poetry, or public, I think he found his best peace when working for the Post Office. Bill was a natural at delivering mail. He loved to walk, loved to meet people, and loved to be outdoors (our family story was that his parents met while hiking on Mt. Tamalpias in Marin County). I think much of his poetry was inspired by his time on his route.
I first started seeing my dad on his route when I would walk to third grade at Oxford School in Berkeley. I was lucky enough that my walk included part of his route. I’d see him every once in a while, and I would always get a hug. Later he became a “T-6,” which meant he had five routes he would deliver, each one one day per week (this is how the Post Office gives you six days of mail and the Letter Carriers only work five days a week), and one of his routes included our house.
Most of his time at the Post Office he delivered mail in the region north of Hearst Street and east of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way (he was proud when Berkeley changed the name of Grove St to Martin Luther King, Jr. Way).
His final years were on a route that included the Berkeley Rose Garden, and he loved stopping there for lunch. On his last day, I walked with him most of the day, and took photos at various locations. Below are a collection of these photos, which he proudly displayed on a board at home with his “Last punch bunch” t-shirt. If you recognize any of the people in the photos, please add a comment to identify them, and if you are in contact with them, please let them know about this site.
In 1979, Bill was arrested at a protest against Cruise Missiles at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, CA. This was Bill’s first arrest in a protest (although he was a lifelong protestor for peace and civil rights). His middle son, Lee, had been arrested the year before at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant (near San Luis Obispo, CA). Leading to that protest, Bill drove a “sag wagon” truck that carried supplies for Lee and six other riders who rode their bicycles from Berkeley to SLO to “Pedal Out Plutonium on a Bicycle.” Bill wrote the following letter to Lee after his 1979 protest at Lockheed. Finish Reading: A letter to his son after being arrested at Lockheed in 1979
The Trampleasure family invites you to the first annual Bill Trampleasure Memorial Poetry reading:
November 10, 2013, 2:45 – 4:15
Community Room, Main Branch Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kitteredge St.
Bring your own poem, read your favorite of Bill’s poems, or just listen…
If you are a member of Facebook, you can see the event listed here (feel free to RSVP there if you desire).
Help us to publicize the event (everyone is invited): You can download a flyer here to post/share.
The following are letters to the Berkeley Daily Gazette written by Bill in 1971, published in the “The open forum” section. (Information on Reverend Doug Smith’s Vietnam War Protest on Mt. Shasta can be found here.)
Tuesday morning I watched the sunrise from the summit of Mt. Shasta. I was with my friend Dough Smith, a man of peace. I had climbed Shasta on Monday, the 26th anniversary of the sunburst explosion over Nagasaki. I had climbed to be with Doug, to hug Doug, to support Doug. I had climbed to draw closer to my God and to myself. I had climbed because Shasta had begun to cast her spell over me since Doug had first shared with some of us his hopes and plans for the Shasta project. Finish Reading: Two letters about hills and mountains