Home at the Edge of the World Alameda Poet Laureate Inaugural Poem There are houses down your shaded streets – beneath your oaks, your ginkos, your avenues of palm – Leaded in glass, shingled in fish-scale, spangled with gingerbread, Victorian ladies tarted up for Carnival, their history and lore curving like a staircase into view. Gentlemen strolled in spats, ladies swung their parasols, bay breezes curling with fog and the clank of halyards, snapping flags. Water, at every turn, glittering to shore, to ship, to ankles and toes. Neptune would have been pleased to see his name emblazoned, to hear the calliope, the splash and crank, the punch of tickets.…