This week’s episode of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast features a special excerpt from the Exploring San Francisco podcast by San Francisco Travel. Award-winning host and travel writer Aaron Millar invited Viewless Wings founder and City of Dublin Poet Laureate James Morehead to recite his poem “nine point five miles per hour”, recorded while riding a San Francisco cable car. Aaron also interviews James about his work with the City of Dublin and how he discovered the art of poetry.
James’ poem was inspired by a visit to the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. The museum, “operated by the Friends of the Cable Car Museum as a nonprofit educational facility,” is “located in the historic Washington/Mason cable car barn and powerhouse, the museum deck overlooks the huge engines and winding wheels that pull the cables.” Incredibly, San Francisco’s cable cars are operated by the cables flowing in and out of this single building at nine point five miles per hour.
nine point five miles per hour
by james c. morehead
after the San Francisco Cable Car Museum (San Francisco, California)
caution cable car crossing
stenciled yellow on asphalt
outside a cavernous brick powerhouse
it all starts and ends here:
four continuous loops—wire rope
stretched tight by tension sheaves
turned precisely nine point five miles per hour
by winding machinery—
motors and gears, massive and dripping with grease
until night falls and cars sleep
when workers wake to splice worn cables
in time for the morning rush
—
gold rush inventor andrew hallidie
dreamt of designs for carrying
ore from mines to mills
and corseted ladies, men in top hats
children sporting their sunday best
up the steep sandy slopes of san francisco
he wrote of the great cruelty and hardship
of horses pulling streetcars
up rain-slicked cobblestones
until one slipped, brakes failed,
dragging the terrified standardbred down
leaving it mutilated between truck and rail
hallidie’s cables fanned out, rattling in trenches
past union square to fisherman's wharf
from van ness to embarcadero
—
a century later i wait at the base of powell
listening to buskers drum on trash cans
as two operators shove #16 on a turnaround
i cling to a handrail right upfront
feet balanced on a wooden running board,
jostling with tourists smiling for selfies
with two distinct clangs on the cable car bell
our driver pulls hard on a long iron grip
so its jaw can clench cable as ratchet teeth chatter
through an intersection we go
nine point five miles an hour
chilled by wisps of fog up and over nob hill
Here is the complete episode of Exploring San Francisco featuring James Morehead’s poem and much more:
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