Meeting in Monterey

....for karen

This looks so familiar, I said to you that day,
on a bench, on Cannery Row,
and you nodded,
your long fingers pulling at the coppery sun in your hair.

Steinbeck's garden of priests and whores
were lost to us as we ate our sandwiches.
We could not see his footprints imbedded in the new pavement,
though we knew he had walked there.

Neither could we see our own,
nor how we got to that bench
from that inland place where we grew up,
where we spent our days
like change from our pockets.

But it was here we came,
out of the wild howling of our expectant hearts,
out of the hills where we had danced,
turning, through mazes,
across our sepatate high wires;
and if we knew each other as girls,
who can say?

There were no fishwives or winos
whistling spit on that street anymore,
and the blue water rose against us,
moored there in that spot;
and though we spoke in reminescent tones,
what bonds did we have before that day?
None,
that I can see,
but us two,
in Monterey.