This is the second in a series of posts remembering the work of poet and activist Jeffrey Betcher (1960-2017).
Preface: Left “believing in the pack mentality of strays,” the poetry of Jeffrey Betcher speaks from the entire collective of American queer stray culture, that very lost-and-found narrative of reinvention on the docks of survival. These docks, being the green-heeled sanctuary of San Francisco from 1986-2016, these docks gave birth to an examination and liberation of meaning, as wildly honest and true-to-mirror as every queer breath weʼve danced. From this collection of Jeffrey Betcherʼs poems, “The Fucking Seasons, Selected Poems 1986 to 2016,” we hear the journeys into witness, touch the lips of knowing “love has been here. Hungry footsteps, breath released, and touch can change the land forever.” A San Franciscan born of rural Ohio, Jeffrey Betcherʼs poetry informs the landscape of nature, saying simply, “Iʼm a witness. Love has been here.”
– Toussaint St. Negritude,
Poet, bass clarinetist, composer
Billy Dew Meadow
Mountain meadow,
sonant place (and
I thought of love, of
wanting it so) that
only the locals
know. The pass: im-
passible, Barbara and
Robert, old lovers,
say. But they like us,
four wheel drive us
over the folded
earth, along the
tree-toothed grin of
grass. We laugh as
everything is young, or
time doesn’t mean much.
Named for a miner. “A
frenchman.” Ah, then
Dieu, perhaps. Billy, dear,
What is your name? What
man amongst men were
you? And where are you
buried? With whose lock of
hair? Here’s history un
kempt. Fir shacks sagging. Mer-
ci, Billy, from friends at
play in your sweet
meadow. Jim lying
stoned in grass, and
me perched ready to
fly through men, their
names and touches and
fields and shag of
beard where a stream
presses the center of
story scorched by
prairie-fire, orange
yellow and purple
rods and golden
faces bristling with repro-
duction as dragonflies
swarm. My shadow,
standing on shadow
rock: I’m shirtless and
could be twelve or
Icarus. Expectation
winging long as
afternoon, backlit
ass on fire! A
halo you may re-
call, dear Billy.
Above the wooded
ridge: it’s blue sky
moon, Billy. Vastly over a
century old. Still,
find my billet-
doux tomorrow, Billy,
find your meadow
tomorrow in every
shaven face.
-July 25, 1996, Fish Camp, California
(C) 2017 Jeffrey L. Betcher Living Trust
About the Author: Jeffrey Betcher donned many hats over more than 30 years in San Francisco, yet maintained an integrity of purpose. A writer, an educator, an advocate for the prevention of violence against women and children, and a grassroots community organizer, he gained national attention as a leader in the “guerrilla gardening” movement, helping transform his crime-ridden street in the Bayview neighborhood into an urban oasis. His intimate poetry was also cultivated over the decades, exploring survival and engagement, and the labyrinth of the heart. Though he dodged the HIV bullet in the plague-torn years, a terminal bout of cancer cut his life short in 2017. In addition to his chapbook of Selected Poems (1986-2016), he completed an epic sonnet, Whistling Through, an odyssey into the cancer machine and death itself
More By Jeffrey Betcher:
Dear Allen Ginsberg
Image Credit: Vincent Van Gogh “Wheat Field at Auvers with White House” (1890) Public Domain
As It Ought To Be 
