Bill wrote this poem “it must have been in the 60’s.” I recorded him reading it in 2008, then added the images to create this video.
Four Poems — distributed 3-20-1991
Bill distributed these four poems on a flier in March of 1991. His introductions are in above each.
Dear friends,
Poetry has been good for me lately. This first day of spring seems right for collecting a few and sharing them with some of you. I owe some of you written copies of one or another of these. Others of you I simply share these with as time and circumstances (including our April trip East) permit.
Peace/love, Bill
(Asilomar, by the sea, 12-9-90, with friend Jon).
All engulfing song of surf, all encompassing, sequined sky - my ears and eyes applaud as my soul heaves sigh after sigh after deep and wide sigh.
(On my mail route, 2-4-91, after a lovely, clumsy moment shared with a beautiful human being, one of my postal patrons)
How long do we have to say anything? How long do we have to wonder if these words or those words are right or wrong? How long do we have to discover there may be no right, no wrong? How long do we have to embrace silence? How long do we have to discover there may be all the time we need? How long do we have to wonder how long we have?
(On Mt. Tamalpais, March 4th, 1991, early in the morning in a wild storm, by myself, near a cabin called “Peace in the Woods” where I was sharing a weekend with friends Jon, Bill and Frank)
March forth, dance on and sign your song. March forth dance on, the journey's long. March forth, dance on and as you do, remember, friend, somewhere, I'm marching, dancing, singing, too.
(First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, 2-24-91, during and after the 8:30 am Meditation Service, as later published and illustrated in the News Bulletin of the church)
Two chairs by the "In Memoriam" wall, in dialogue, in relationship. No persons present, but what presence of spirit of souls of silence as the phoenix takes wing between the songs of the windblown branches and leaves of the deeply rooted many trees of life.
Retirement and Unretirement (An April 1st Tale) 1990
I retired April 1st [1990].
For years I planned to begin retirement with a walking bridge between the world of work and a world beyond work. I would push a mail cart from San Francisco to the United Nations in support of peace and the U.N., from April 25 to October 24. But on April 26, at Martin Luther King, Jr., Park in Berkeley, under the city’s U.N. flag, I announced that I would not walk.
The doubts and fears about a solo walk which I had tried to push aside had finally overcome the energy of my dream, hopes and preparations. I became depressed and distressingly suicidal. For about two weeks I stewed in my own juices, ashamed, disappointed in myself and wanting to die.
Years ago my older brother had killed himself in his late twenties. I knew how hard that was on family and friends. That knowledge, my deep belief in the preceiousness of life, support from famly and close friends, and some crisis thereapy led me to loking for some way out of what felt like a self-made trap.
When I had announced the cancellation of the walk, our postmaster said something about the people on my route would like me back. Now I decided to find out whether there was a way to cancel my as yet incomplete retirment process. There was. I went for it.
June 9 I went back to work on my old route through a process part bureaucratic, part very human and part miraculous. I am still depressed with varing ups and downs. I am glad to be alive and back on my “appointed rounds”. Acceptance and affirmation from postal workers and patrons have been helpful factors for which I am grateful. I have no dates, calendars nor slogans for any second retirement. One day at a time sounds good.
I am in theapy and counseling seeking healing and understanding. Instead of walking “from sea to shining sea” I am on our inner peace pilgrimage across a personal continent of questions and cofusion, perhaps a pilgrimage from me to shining me.
Possible moral to this tale: Don’t put all your retirement legs behind one cart.
Bill Trampleasure
Five Ogunquit Poems, 1993
Ogunquit, 11-6-1993
The museum is closed, winterized. Benches and some of the sculpture garden critters are wrapped snugly in blue plastic, cocoons, hibernating until spring, with here and there a head, tail or toenail showing. Some statues, pieces of scupture, have been released from their concrete anchorages and hidden away somewhere in deeper hibernation. The anchorages, foundations remain for me to choose my place to stand. Shall I be "The War Machine", facing the beauty of the ocean and the sunrise? Or shall I be the "Man from Assissi", an instrument of peace, calling others to join me and all those others already in the planetary pageant of peace? Will you join us in building bridges, reflecting in and on ponds (at Walden and elsewhere) sitting in the sun singing our songs continuing our own personal peace pilgrimages along well traveled or less well traveled paths making our choices taking our chances risking our self-images inhaling and exhaling endless "Thank yous"?
Ogunquit, 11-6-1993
360 will do or take in the view around you 360 will do to take in the view within you and if 360 is beyond you, click off one or two one or two clicks of difference may just do to expand or create anew your point of view
Agamenticus Mountain, 11-11-1993, Veterans Day
Foot-on-moon disease make me ill at ease. What is this mostly macho/military race for space? Why not embrace the whole race here on Mother Earth as one? Then when that's done, maybe some cosmic critters from another place will want to drop in and get to know us face to face
12-4-1993, Marginal Way and Bread & Roses
Christmas (A definition by an un-christian to those whom it may concern
Christmas is living the love we have received Christmas is forgiving when we feel we've been deceived Christmas is unloading and feeling so relieved Christmas is loving the life we have received
12-3-1993, Top of the Way (a bench)
San Francisco I've been to the top of your Mark. I've gloried in its wonderous view. And Boston, I've been to the top of your Hub. I love what you can do. But on this finestkind Ogunquit day, seated at the top of its Marginal Way, I must confess, when all is said and done, The Top of the Way is my personal Number One.
Unicorn
A wonderful horn has the unicorn. We hope he/she didn't have it before he/she was born.
Bill & Mary Lee, March 1989
A have a rosy view
I have a rosy view out to Talmapais and the Golden Gate where the mountain meets the sea. The Sleeping Princess may yet swing free out through the GAte to an ocean of emotion with a peaceful bent. Perhaps all of time has been well spent. A single rose a single word a single silent space A single woman single man A coupled life embrace. Two persons commune on the Rose Garden bench, letting their fingers do the talking. All around silent roses sign to us of life's joyful beauty embracing its thorny perplexities and paradoxes.
(By Bill, the postal poet, in celebration of the Berkeley Rose Garden’s first half-century. 1987)
Plaque Honoring printing of Signatory copies of UN Charter in 1945
Located at the University of Calilfornia printing office on Oxford Street at Center St, Berkeley, CA.
The plaque reads:
Presented to the University of California Printing Services
Printer of the Signatory Copies of the
Charter of the United Nations and
Statue of the International Court of Justice
Recognized by United Nations Association of the United States of America, East Bay Chapter on the 50th Anniversary of the June 26, 1945 Signing
A Fairy-Land of Moon-Light
Memory Hikes Through Marin
“A Fairy-Land of Moon-Light”
By Calvin Roy Trampleasure
[circa March 1917]
It was a beautiful day in mid-September. We had been to the top of Twin Peaks in the morning, just by way of an appetizer for’ the trip we had planned for later in the day.
The air had been particularly clear and free from fog, so it was with great anticipation that we dropped from the train in Mill Valley late that afternoon.
We chose the easiest way as a starter, and climbing the steps back of the depot, followed along the smooth winding road that leads, always upward, to the big water tank. Here it becomes discouraged and dwindles to a trail, at first broad and open, then as it ascends more steeply, shut in narrowly by the thick-growing chaparral.
Reaching the rail-road we decided to hit the ties for a ways — cutting across the “bow-knot” and continuing to the main ridge. Here our real work began, as we left the track end started to climb. We climbed rapidly (at first) partly out of respect to the presence of a flock of mosquitoes that seemed desirous of making our acquaintance. Either they were drowned in the perspiration our haste induced, or were overcome by the altitude; at any rate we soon forgot then in contemplation of the rapidly changing scene around us.
Presently the sun sank behind the hills to the West, and as we reached the top of the ridge the lengthening shadows crept slowly across the marshes — the waters of the bay turned to a ruffled gray, having the appearance of a huge field of wind-roughened ice. Beyond, the Berkeley Hills showed through the deepening haze.
From the Tavern we hastened to the top, and arrived just as the sun, now turned a red-gold ball, touched the horizon. Here it paused for a moment, and then, like a disc of red parafine, seemed to melt from sight, merging sky and sea in a coppery-red glow. Gradually the light faded, and now our eyes turned Eastward.
Above the dim outlines of Mt. Diablo the almost-full moon was rising and spreading a path of silver across the bay. As we stood and watched, the hills lost their ruggedness, as though a giant hand had smoothed them and filled the hollows with a gray softness. The twilight deepened and changed to night — while in the little suburban towns at our feet, myriads of lights twinkled forth, till the country around seemed like a vast calm sea, reflecting the stars above.
Away to the East the lights of Vallejo shone brightly. The far shore-line of San Pablo bay was traced by the flickering headlight of an Ess-Pee train. The lights of Richmond stretched away in ordered lines — and so on through Berkeley, Oakland, and across the bay from the ferry to far down the beach — the long reach of Golden Gate Park standing out like a black patch in a sea of light. Seaward, the light on the Farallines[1] flashed it’s warning, while along the horizon a faint glow still told the fare-well of the setting sun.
As the moon rose higher, the rocks and brown fields below loomed ghost-like, taking strange shapes and forms. And over all a warm North wind blew softly — while from the marshes rose the joyful frog-chorus, singing songs of praise to the beautiful night.
Save for voices that now and then came faintly from the Tavern below, we seemed alone in fairy-land – a fairy-land of moon-light. We were loth to leave, but the wind vial now freshening and growing cooler, so we began the home-ward trip.
Down the track we started, past the little spring-fed streams that sparkled and splashed noisily. As we reached the cut in the main ridge and swung to the south, we noticed, along the upper pipe-line, the occasional flash of an electric light, showing that at least a few besides ourselves were enjoying the wondrous beauty of the night. Reaching the pipe-line we walked slowly, now treading the open moon-lit trail, and now winding through a dense grove of redwoods, where hardly a moon-beam shone, and the air was heavy and warm with the absorbed heat of the day.
If you’ve never seen the old mountain or the country around it in the light of a full moon, you have missed seeing it in one of it’s most delightful moods. Try it during the next full moon and you’ll not be disappointed. At this writing the next chance will come on Saturday, April 7th.
Calvin. R. Trampleasure,
Seneca Hotel,
San Francisco.
[1]: Farollon
Calvin Roy Trampleasure was Bill Trampleasure’s father.
Bill reading some of his poems
One of my projects in the past couple years has been to record my dad reading some of his poems. We started on those in his book Earth CommUNity I Love You. I’m posting a few here:
Fall
- Do I Have a Song to Sing
- Scratch Around for Hope
- Accidents of Birth
- Every Birth
- Born Again
- 55 and Counting
- Bright Blue Above
- Wind and Water
- Moon Silver
- Golden Tree
- Berkeley Marina 1
- Berkeley Marina 2
- A Rainy Sunday in February, Circle of Concern
Welcome
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.