This City is My Church

On loving and leaving SF

I write a poem once a year, roughly, when a single phrase pops into my head and tumbles out as a full poem. This year’s poem tumbled out while I bused home from the farmer’s market, produce nearly tumbling out of my bag as I typed. It was February then, the evenings still dark and sunny days still an exception to the rules. This had been one of those exceptions: the kind of Sunday that reminds you why you love where you live. The kind of Sunday that feels like a poem.

This City is My Church 

“This city is my church,”

I sang along on Treasure Island, 

City sky line in sight, 

Not paying attention to the meaning,

Then a high schooler wholly uncertain of what was to come, 

Unsure of everything except for 

My blind faith in San Francisco,  

In the steep hills that will catch you if you stumble,

In the hard rock under my home,

A safe haven in an 

Earthquake zone. 

Today I mean it. 

This city is my church 

And 

My faith is unshakable, 

Unlike the city itself. 

Today at the farmers market

I consider buying a shirt meant for tourists: 

I <3 San Francisco, 

A copy of the I <3 NY icon.

Except the font is slightly different

Except I already wear that heart on my sleeve

Day in and day out.

I don’t buy the shirt, it would be redundant: 

I have it emblazoned across my chest. 

I write this poem on the bus home because 

Out the window, out the corner of my eye 

I see the pink church on Judah, 

The one I crane my neck to admire every time I pass by. 

And behind its two twin spires, 

I see Golden Gate Heights,

The city’s sacred high place. 

This city is my church, 

Its hilltops are my steeples,  

Its ocean beach waves are my holy water, 

Its Muni clanging down the streets, my church bells.

And what then is my communion wafer? 

I don’t know enough religious iconography to continue but 

I do know San Francisco iconography, its gospels, its saints, and its songs, because 

This city is my church, 

And I grew up devout. 

And what I’m realizing as I contemplate leaving, 

As I do every time winter becomes spring, 

And the days drag on, 

Is that leaving my church is not leaving my faith,

Which is emblazoned across my chest. 

And what I’m realizing as I contemplate staying, 

As I do every time winter gives way to spring,

And the sun shines hard on

A day when the fog lifts, 

Is that I have to leave my church to come back to my faith, 

Which will catch me when I stumble, 

My safe haven in an earthquake zone. 

Maybe this is just what it means

to have a home town and 

To love it 

Fiercely. 

Maybe not. 

Maybe this is just a San Franciscan thing. 

Unshakable, 

Unlike the church itself.