MONDAY AFTERNOON 
			IN HAIGHT ASHBURY
			

			You're in a sidewalk cafe
			in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco
			but unlike New York 
			your coffee cup isn't bussed
			the minute you've drained it

			
			They let you sit from morning
			to night, undisturbed

			
			Your cup refills
			at the pace of your thirst

			
			You can bag a big table
			for yourself and sprawl

			
			You can write poems
			a single line in a day
			or five pages
			in one hour

			
			You can read free alternative newspapers
			go out back to the garden
			to bake in the sun
			or stare out the window
			at the endless procession
			of slackers

			
			Or you can stare 
			at your hands
			as you're doing now
			thinking of the daughter 
			whom broken marriage 
			led you to abandon

			
			She lives abroad 
			with her mother

			
			How, you wonder 
			without the bucks to send
			a gift six thousand
			miles away, will you fill
			the void you've left
			in her?

			
			Or, you can take out
			her picture, study it,
			the one of her in profile
			staring sadly through a window,

			
			imagine that she is wondering
			where you are
			or you can visualize her waking
			startled at night crying:
			"Daddy!" But, you're not there

			
			You're in Haight Ashbury,
			in your thirties, recovering
			from alcoholism, writing poems

			
			You are like so many New Yorkers
			who ran aground 
			in bars on bad marriage
			hard labor, mindless consumerism
 
			
			You made one last ditch geographic
			to California to remake yourself
			like a sixties movie hero
			of mid-life crisis -- 

			
			but it's the nineties so 
			you're dressed in black motorcycle 
			gear, not headband and sandals

			
			and Tracey Chapman is teasing
			tears from your eyes

			
			When your forty
			she'll be ten
			and when you're fifty
			she'll be twenty 
			and if you can live to sixty
			with your booze-damaged 
			guts there'll be a reunion,
			gifts, letters, phone calls, 
			sure, and even a book or two 
			dedicated to her
 
			
			and maybe you'll
			have dropped in one weekend and meeting
			in the kitchen over a midnight glass 
			of milk, she'll tell you
			that nothing you do or say makes it better
			"You were gone," she'll say "I needed you then
			I feel so empty"

			
			You miss her cries of 
			glee, others reassure
			her fears
 
			
			there are times
			when none but you
			can help

			
			but you do not hold her
			you cannot hold her now
			you will not soon fill your arms
			with her softness, her blondness
			her blue eyes, her face like yours

			
			It is Monday afternoon
			in Haight Ashbury
			you are alone
			and you say her name aloud

 
			
			
			
			A SCREAM FROM THE BOTTOM

			
			Across the Continental Divide
			the bus climbed
			to the frontier of Montana
			to the highest point 
			on earth
			that most of us
			had ever seen

			
			Along the prairie fence
			wild antelope fled
			the shadow of the slums
			and drought farms
			and crack belts and prisons
			we'd brought with us

			
			Among us sat an ex-con
			wearing a shower cap
			to protect his oily
			natural.  He said
			the antelope were deer,
			and an out-of-work Union
			Pacific man who'd boarded 
			in Larimer
			shook his head
			in mock despair
			and told him what
			they were

			
			The ex-con listened, awed,
			and asked: "But don't dey
			got deer in Home, Home
			On Da Range?"  The Union Pacific
			Man nodded.  "But not 
			around here."

			
			Further on, a bleach blonde
			who'd claimed to be
			a university lecturer 
			in English lit
			whirled in a violent 
			commotion of sequins,
			exclaiming that she'd just
			seen something white as the moon
			and tall as a man perched
			on that distant hill,
			and the railroad man 
			chuckled: "Maybe it was
			a white stallion,"
			which is impossible,
			he confided, leaning
			my way, "You won't
			find any around these
			parts.  Marlboro killed
			the last one, shooting
			a commercial.  Chased it
			with a copter and
			it fell to the dust 
			with a broken neck.  
			Read about it in
			the newspaper"

			
			Still, he let her
			think that's what 
			she'd seen.  "Why
			add to her misery,"
			he winked

			
			The other passengers
			seemed not to care
			The Sacramento-bound
			Soviet emigres still
			nibbled the sandwiches
			they'd passed among
			themselves outside
			the Arbys rest stop
			in Cheyenne
			Babies slept on laps
			and shoulders.  A clean-
			shaven traveling salesman
			with a new haircut and a 
			face like a side of raw bacon
			read with moving lips
			in his Bible

			
			"Mormon," spat a grey-
			beard veteran of the 
			Tet offensive.  Earlier,
			he'd told us his story
			of thrusting a 45. against
			the ribs of a suspected V.C.,
			only to have it misfire
			and blow off three of his
			fingers.  He reached under
			his seat and produced the
			fifth he'd been working on
			since Des Moines

			
			As it passed between our
			smoke-filled mouths, fading
			daylight turned the whiskey 
			bronze

			
			Night seemed to fall
			just as the last drop
			fell on to the
			vet's tongue

			
			He tossed the bottle 
			to the floor, it struck
			loudly, and the eyes of
			the scab driver looked
			up, but the vet stared
			back, masked by the shadow
			of his cap's peaked brim,
			and his eyes contained
			the death which we had
			cringed from in our cribs
			and criminally ambitious
			cities, the death which
			as a soldier 
			he had borne away from
			our downcast bedrooms and
			grave-kitchens and spread
			to a foreign war in our names,
			and that death had come home
			to find us, and we joined
			with his defiance, 
			a legion of memory, 
			our heads in silhouetted ranks,
			our eyes a scream
			from the bottom of silence,
			and the driver's stare
			regained the road,
			remained there.

			
			As the high ground of America
			passed unseen beneath our wheels
			darkness filled the sky,
			turned our windows to mirrors
			And there was nothing to do,
			nothing to see, nothing to say

			
			There was only our sleepless
			faces waiting to arrive

 
			
			
			
			TRUCK STOP

			
			Shining like a silver dollar in the sun, the Greyhound
			American Cruiser drew up at one of those fold-out
			postcard eating joints where rig drivers in Stetson hats
			bang the pinball home with the heels of their hands and
			posters of missing children hang on the wall.  Hydraulic
			brakes hissed as the wheels slowed and the door folded
			back like an accordion, and one by one the passengers
			got off and looked around, wondering where they were.

			
			The riggers watched them file in, with looks hard as
			whetting stones, but their eyes sharpened knives when a
			string of long hairs dressed in God and country-defiling 
			clothes shuffled through the door, including a very
			pregnant wisp of a girl with a face like moonlight and
			wearing Old Glory for a shawl.  One of these, a skinny
			tattooed boy with silver earrings in his lobes and nose
			and lips, and his head bound in a calico bandana,
			headed for the games, and the riggers let him through,
			then closed around him with latent violence as his
			quarters clunked loudly in the slot.

			
			The boy played better than good.  He worked the
			bumpers and the ball like a brisk dance and when he was
			done the score was gonging five alarms and he had won
			everything, which came to points.  And one of the riggers
			leaned close to the boy and asked, respectfully, where he
			was headed.
  
			
			He produced his last cigarette from a crumpled pack,

			
			
			slipped it to his lips, slid his weight from one torn sneaker 
			to the other, and a match flared.  "Cal'fornia," he said,
			splitting the name in two, and all the riggers nodded like a
			team.  They had seen his like passing through before.
			They knew he had no family there.

			
			"Gonna deal crack and fuck your brains out, won't you"
			sneered one rigger.

			
			"Pot, maybe," said the boy, "I need cash bad.  I got a kid 
			on the way," then smiled coolly at his girl.  "She's almost
			due."

			
			She was there among them, quiet as a moonbeam, and
			the startled riggers turned up their sunbeaten faces in sly
			grins and mumbled, "Hi."It was hard not to stare.  
			One of them offered gently: "The barbecue beef is real good 	here," 
			and looked at the road.  "Best eat up.  Not another stop in 	Nebraska 
			for a hundred miles.""I know," she smiled wanly, "I just feel 
			too sick to eat."

			
			But by her famished face the riggers knew it wasn't so,
			that the kids were broke, and that the boy had spent their
			last change to play.  Angrily, one of the riggers broke off
			and returned with a bag of sour lemon balls.  "My wife," he 
			said, "sucks them when she's got somethin' in the oven."
			The girl received his offering without a word.  And just
			then the bus driver announced it's time to board.

			
			"Well," said the boy, encircling her shoulder.

			
			The riggers watched as the big silver cruiser sped away,
			and didn't move or say anything until one of them broke in

			
			
			cheerfully with: "Hell, they're young.  They'll find some
			place to live as soon as they arrive."
			"Sure," snarled the one who'd bought candy.  "And I bet 
			they spend their nights in the gutter, and that baby gets
			dropped in some squatters hole somewhere, like a god damn
			animal."

			
			The riggers absorbed the sober truth of it.  And the one
			who spoke bit his lip that he had not done something 
		                more, but he saw so many like them passing through, and
		                there was no helping it, no helping it at all.