Sea gulls squawked and arched their wings
\nand dove for scraps above the terminal
\nwhere long grey busses in their slots
\nwaited for their human cargo,
\neach with his \u00a0own destination.
\nFrom the wharf I could hear sea lions
\nbelch like foghorns, each to each,
\nlike newborn pups and their mothers
\non a rocky beach.
\nA pelican on a crowded pier
\nstands above his shadow.<\/p>\n
The Oakland bus leaves from the Embarcadero.
\nThey check messages and text.
\nNo one reads on this wired bus
\nunlike those I took in the turbulent Age of Aquarius
\nwhen flowers filled the barrels of guns
\nand we sung \u201cHere Comes the Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n
They are all young, except we two,
\nthe old lady across the aisle and me.
\nI remember wearing Che on a black tee
\nwith bell bottom jeans when I carried signs
\nacross a college green;
\nglad and golden in my nubile youth,
\nfull of hope, a stranger to disillusionment and despair.
\nWe wondered why God was so unfair or if he existed.<\/p>\n
The young men gazed straight ahead;
\nnoticing nothing in particular.
\nTheir curlicued tattoos bore names in red and \u00a0blue
\nlike Angel and Estelle (or something else celestial)
\nin a cupid\u2019s sanguine heart with an arrow passing through.<\/p>\n
The traffic on the bridge was light.
\nAnd to the right, a balmy bay reflects the sky;
\nnow and then, tiny triangles of white
\nleaned back to fill their sails with wind.
\nFoam tipped waves rose and slapped against a tidal swell.
\nSea snails slept on polished stones, starfish in the shallows.
\nA pelican on a pier stood above his shadow.<\/p>\n
Small and lean, such tiny hands and feet,
\nmore than sixty years at least.
\nA mass of wrinkles and withered skin pinched her cheeks.
\nAsian eyed, perhaps she spent her life planting rice
\nin unrelenting heat and harvesting the crop
\nbefore the monsoon came.
\nWhat was her name?<\/p>\n
We passed the yellow daffodils around the lake,
\nsnow white orchids, crocus and Queen Anne\u2019s lace.
\nCosmos and chrysanthemums rested in the shade of cherry trees.
\nTheir nascent blooms scent a summer breeze.<\/p>\n
We both got off at Laurel Street.
\nI watched her walk until she stopped to rest.
\nI wondered how long\u00a0 t\u2019would be
\nbefore I, too, stopped for breath.<\/p>\n
Was she remembering how her lover
\nlifted her silk ao dai,
\nacross which mountain mists
\nfloated above a golden temple and the lofty pines,
\nthe memory of that kiss more sacred than the rest.<\/p>\n
His lips were warm and wet inside her mouth
\nand tasted like cinnamon.
\nHer eyes caught in the net of his obsession,
\nablaze with happiness.<\/p>\n
It was an innocent and tender time
\nbefore the fertile earth burned black
\nfrom fires in the sky.
\nThe cow stopped giving milk,
\ntheir udders scorched, the oxen blind.<\/p>\n
Could our separate souls
\nspeak in a language we both knew?
\nOr were we just marking time
\nbefore a sad and solitary death
\nenjoying all the simple pleasures
\nwhile they last?<\/p>\n
Or was she thinking of that bloody February afternoon
\nwhen her beau, not yet nineteen, took a bullet to the brain
\non that high and grassy mound.<\/p>\n
She would say he was
\nthe sweetest boy
\nshe\u2019d ever known.<\/p>\n
Had we met, we might have had a cup of tea,
\na slice of lemon pie.
\nPerhaps we would have walked
\nthrough her creaking garden gate
\nto see the tiny bridge over the small, but luminous pond.
\nSparkling iridescent scales flashed in the sun.
\nA Buddha carved in polished jade laughs at water lilies.<\/p>\n
Had I had a chance to speak, I might have said,
\n\u201cI lost my true love too.\u201d
\nHe died on a high and grassy hill that February afternoon.\u201d
\nHe was the last of his platoon.<\/p>\n
Now they are brothers in death and sisters in grief are we.
\nBut as I guessed, we went our separate paths.
\nI went east.\u00a0 She went west
\nand never again they crossed.
\n________________________________________<\/p>\n
Barbara Millar is a free lance writer and poet from northern California who was a young anti-war protester during the Vietnam War.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sea gulls squawked and arched their wings
\n and dove for scraps above the terminal
\n where long grey busses in their slots
\n waited for their human cargo,
\n each with his own destination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}