on 7th Avenue
like a 7th grade bully,
a mind in the wind
flung my flimsy self about.
I still lurched forward
a block from Golden
Gate Park’s
shuddering leaves.
I can’t remember:
did I stumble
through an infant
morning’s crawling sunrays
caught in a kidnapping wind
or trudge through
a windstorm day
gaping
through cataractic
eyes of dusk?
My memory
is blowing away
like a balloon
untethered
to a California hand.
Since a windy wind goes so very windy,
does a mind
shaken by a wind shove
go mendy
not to be mixed up
with my neighbor Mindy
who lives with her senior
cat Maureen
and trails of shedding fur?
At 7th and Cabrillo,
I saw my one
and only Misty
draped in a misty veneer.
Are mist and wind friends?
I admit this mist
might be a fiction
camped
in my married mind.
Oh I remember now
the age of that day:
we got wind-slapped
in a wrinkled windy day.
Stamped
with a time of sunset death,
this sunlight got reborn
into a newborn night
as we dipped
our mendy minds
into Safeway’s glow
to seek out marmalade
we soon spread
across sour-
dough of calm.
The wind’s feet
stomped
on the trail home
past Maureen’s
abandoned fur.
Back in our walled
escape, after we witnessed
Mindy snatch out
her bedroom light,
Misty swallowed a sweet
spread
within our windless
haven.