IN THE AIR

It might have been that I was on my way

To eat at The Dove (good coffee)

Or Mama Lucita’s (the best eggs rancheros

I will ever have though Mama will

One day be closed by the Health Department)

Or Medici’s (hamburgers on back bread;

Individual Chicago-style pizzas). Then again,

I might have been going to buy books

At Powell’s (characterless but huge

And a box of free samples outside the door)

Or O’Gara’s (a thin Irish man with a trim mustache

And a pipe who’d gesture each morning,

Making the dust rise from the books

And walk out the door and down 57th Street

Towards Powell’s). It was sunny, I remember

And I suddenly leaped in the air, leaving

Much of who I was still hovering.

I have spent years discovering

Just who it was who came down.