Mission Boulevard

The head shops with their billowing cloth
canopies, red lights, and bead curtains.
The girls in bikinis, trying on thin brass
bracelets, bells tied with leather straps
around their ankles. And the boys in their
baggies and jams, red and blue Saint Christopher
medals around their necks. Everyone shuffling,
barefoot or in water-buffalo sandals, hair
long, shaggy with salt, reddish or blond.
And there was that room in the back with black
lights where you picked out the posters
of Pig Pen and Castro, and the lady with too many
bracelets rolled them tightly into plastic sleeves.

And now years later you think what hope is there
for a secret life? or for the awkwardness
of taking out from your madras shorts the vinyl
football-shaped coin purse in which you’d carefully
folded your savings for just this purchase?
What hope is there for falling in love again
with that woman who took the money and handed back
the change smelling of incense and leather,
while you stared through the glass sales case
filled with pipes, hookahs, and roach clips
and the colorful packs of cigarette papers
displayed in a fan like the tail of an exotic bird?