POEM + PLACE

New Year'sin San Francisco

A morning in Duboce Triangle: fog, coffee, coincidence, a passing stranger, and a song that refused to leave.

AUTHOR NARRATION

Hear the poem.

Read by A.F. King in the original English.

New Year's in San FranciscoA.F. King · English narration

GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEM

At a vertex of Duboce Triangle.

Part of the poem unfolds around San Francisco's Duboce Triangle, where an otherwise ordinary New Year's morning became unusually memorable.

For now, this map shows the neighborhood generally. Once the exact intersection described in the poem is identified, the exhibit can be centered precisely on that point.

INTERACTIVE MAPDuboce Triangle

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STREET VIEW

Once the exact location is identified, an interactive street-level view can be added here.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

The beautiful passerby.

Privacy-treated photograph of the man referenced in New Year's in San Francisco.
Privacy-treated archival photograph.

The stranger glimpsed that morning did not remain entirely a stranger.

I encountered him again later, which means that unlike many transient figures who appear in poems, a small photographic trace of this one actually survives.

The image displayed here has been altered to preserve the subject's privacy.

SOUNDTRACK

The song in my head.

The song was I Want Youby Savage Garden.

It became part of the memory of the morning: headphones in, the encounter already receding, the song carrying the rest of the walk.

AUTHOR'S NOTEBOOK

Things worth keeping.

A

The triangle

Once the exact location is reconstructed, this note can explain which geographical "vertex" was meant and why that wording entered the poem.

B

Coincidence

The poem turns a tiny interaction with a stranger into the kind of coincidence that can color an otherwise ordinary day.

C

What survives

Additional photographs, trip records, memories, or artifacts from the visit can be added here if they surface.

READER DISCUSSION

Leave something behind.

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