Tonight, For The Robin Hour

A return to the nest via a circuitous route.

I doze and walk the streets of San Francisco looking for a spirit that I recall from years gone by; the long tall lass who found her young womanhood months before she died.

After dozens of city blocks, around 3:30 AM she finally spoke to me from the corner of Sacramento and Pierce. I sat across the street with her for a while, shadowed and cold amongst elaborate concrete landscaping. We were listening to the full moon and early summer wind. The startling Victorian across from us still demanded homage, as much, I'm sure, as it did before our mid 70's earthquake.

I was bundled and bleary, alley cat alone. She was dead and ethereally appealing. We spoke of her sensuality and how with her quickened smile and rapier tongue and wit, she would probably have owned a fair portion of this town by now, had she lived.

She laughed at my sentimentality and how I'd had the old lady verve to deck myself out that night. Penniless and alone, in linen and black heels I'd draped my ideals towards a lover who'd only ever know me by poetic extension. All that heat and tension instead produced an obnoxiously loud car full of sotted young men, being pulled to that moment as if by some unseen force.

I quietly bid her adieu and scurried away from our perch, slipping in and out of the shadows. As I tottered away from that hallowed corner, I hoped their hollering over stolen, captive moments with cameras, tits, cocks and asses would allow me to melt back into the obscure gray, gratefully unnoticed.

The Night Wind kept asking for movement. We spun and whirled through dawn. I held tight to the vision of a white sheeted heaven, laughing, liquid warm lovers, poetically entwined.