North Beach Offering

I will accept this one day. I won't have a choice.

The way I spent my time in San Francisco not finding

the Saint John Coltrane Church,

but staring for hours into the hatched face of Paul Klee's

Stachel, der Clown. I took coffee in Vesuvio's

and Irish beers there too,

while across the alley every phoneme

of every word riding my bloodstream

gathered dust and gestured to the chapped hands

of men older even than my father.

We offered what we could to North Beach

and dined with one hundred librarians,

butter caked on their croissants

and the little white plates of the cafe

were chipped pedestals

where the late afternoon discarded

the sun.

-- Kristofer Collins