Three Day Pass

They landed at midnight, three days later
their last two dollars landed in the cardboard box of a panhandler,
water-drenched fire eater at the Pier.
Beer cost four and there’s a store on every corner here,
San Francisco, the richest port, each step thick with gold and light,
stink of onions and steeples and dogs with strange names.

Miguel, drooping curls, drooping mustache,
old skin and mouth of an economics professor,
Miguel you gave a handful of hash to the Minnesota girls
before you knew their names.
Green California skunk smell, high school’s satan,
they will fall off the edge of the continent but
they will not say no.

Where on the streets have you fallen, Miguel?
And besides, who else has tripped down these hills,
scraped their knees and vomited wine, unable to find themselves
at the beach, too far from the Greyhound station, too far from
anywhere. Anyway,
how different can one voyage be
when so many others have died here, lost their shoes here,
fell in love with the floors of a bookstore,
slept on a couch and woke feeling alive;
half-woke and wondered how long,
knew it was too good to last, threw youth to the pigeons,
broke their teeth, turned their tongues through cable wires,
smoked away summer in the shadow of the sea.
We justify so much.

We take the handful of weed, the bitter pill in the bathroom
that carries time like a sleeping child,
gently high in Washington square (as if DiMaggio still cares)
to pace the latitude line and find a place between grass and sky.
Where are you, Miguel, what paths have you traced to come so far
from Puerto Rico, you said it meant rich port,
you explained it all to those girls from Minnesota you’ll forget tomorrow.

They will ride to the end of the line, throw themselves
elbows first into the sand, sun worn, glad and tall,
a departing plane heavy on their eyelids.
Later that night they’ll stand on prairie’s edge.
But did they find it?
The pacific call that has drawn dreamers beneath red Chinese lanterns—
not smoke or wine but the ineffable promise
that the waves would welcome them in,
that the ships could take them further west than those
last crispy hopes, those last two dollars.