Labor Day 1969

She was wearing my favorite jacket when I picked her up, the black denim one with the dolphin embroidered on the back. He was an impossible shade of blue, leaping out of a multicolored ocean under a psychedelic sunset. Black t-shirt, bell bottoms, white sneakers, she looked even younger than her sixteen years. Her long brown hair was tied in a pony tail that snaked over her left shoulder and down to her breast. She had a red cotton bandana around her neck like an outlaw's daughter. We walked to the subway holding hands, both hands in the pocket of my jacket. There was more of a chill than usual for a Labor Day morning.

At the pier we boarded the old sidewheeler steamboat and laughed at all the people running forward to try to be the first person in the bow. We strolled aft to the fantail and up to the third deck, where the sun was warming the folding chairs. An ocean liner passed downstream in the river channel and her wake set the steamboat to rocking gently.

At the stroke of ten the captain sounded the steam whistle and edged out of the slip. "Whistle" is such an inadequate word for that brass throated guardian angel, warning all other ships out of our path. Seconds later the echo bounced off the skyscrapers in midtown and rolled back to us, now out in the channel.

She lay her head on my shoulder and we shared a cigarette as the towns rolled by along the river shore. The sun tried to be warm, but there was no mistaking the color of autumn in its beams. We buttoned our jackets against the September cool.

I kissed her under the Bear Mountain Bridge, as the boat heeled hard to starboard to return to the city. While the boat lay broadside to the wash a stray wave slapped her and she rolled hard, jamming the girl's teeth into my gum. The kiss tasted of blood but we kissed anyway. The want was that strong.

Back at the dock that evening the old steamer eased gratefully into her slip. We stepped from ship to shore as the captain rang down "Finished With Engines" on the telegraph. We stood waiting to cross Twelfth Avenue, amazed at how short the days had become.

It was already dark when I brought her home.

Labor Day Weekend

Rain making rivers in the gutters, little whitecaps bubbling up around the tires of the sleeping cars. Raindrops making craters in the sand, til the beach looks like the lonely side of the moon. Rain combing the dead branches from the trees, brushing their green hair before they go to sleep. One glance and you know, it's the first rain of autumn.

The Mirrors

On the other side of the mirror the sky is made of water and the rivers are made of air. You can walk through the dry sand at the bottom of the East River and look up at the watery sky floating over your head. The towers of the Brooklyn Bridge rise out of the sand like eternity's doorstop; I carved my initials on one of the granite blocks right where it passed below the sand. It made me sad to think of all the tons of stonework down there under the sand, that never get to see the light of day.

I walked across the harbor bottom to the ferry terminal at the Battery and looked up at the ferry boats floating above my head in the sky. Somewhere in the sand under the ferry slip there's a souvenir badge from the Bronx Zoo. I dropped it there when I was about seven years old. In the real world it rusted away to nothing years ago, but on the other side of the mirror it's dry and warm, and just as shiny as the day I dropped it.

I decided to walk out to Brighton Beach. About a million years ago on a winter Sunday afternoon when the sun shone yellow and the wind smelled like Thanksgiving I walked this beach with a brown eyed girl with her hair in a pony tail. Her daughter, age six, was playing with the dogs people brought to run on the beach. We took a stick of driftwood and wrote, "I will love you forever." in the sand and signed our names underneath. She told me that when the tide came in and the waves washed this off the beach they would carry it forever through all the oceans of the world. Well, now it's thirty years later and I wondered if she was right.

Sure enough, there was our love letter, lying on the sand, our names on the bottom. The waves broke over my head, air and water rolling together in some hopelessly upside down surf. Her daughter is older today than we were when we wrote that letter in the sand. I hope her mom is happy, 'cos I am.

Somewhere North Of Montreal

Will I climb the mast, just because she asks me? Up the rope ladders one after another, sail, topsail, topgallant, royal, skysail, moonraker? Just to taste the night wind, feel the canvas rough in my hands? Will the wind blow the stars out of the sky, their light dripping from my fingers? Will I taste the salt spray on my tongue, and wonder if it's really her tears? Will she love me too, when Polaris is floating over the white line in the middle of the highway? God, I hope so!

Summer's Almost Gone

The sky was a little different yesterday, the light a little more white, a little more blue. It was still summer, warm and humid, but the color of the air was September. Most people won't see it for a while but it's there. When I saw it I thought of a day in 1982, swimming with Mindy at Brighton Beach. It was a week after Labor Day and the lifeguards were gone for the year, but we were out in the deep water, the water so warm and buoyant. It must have been around six when we headed for shore. As soon as my feet hit the bottom and I stood upright I could feel it, that little chill in the breeze that raised gooosebumps on my skin. As I walked out of the ocean I said goodbye for now, because I knew I wouldn't wade back there again until Columbus Day had passed, and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and Valentines Day and Easter and so many chapters of life lived on dry land. It made me sad but it made me grateful.

Pickled

Today was my father's 89th birthday, except that he drank himself to death at 72. So I guess it doesn't count for much, does it? Two days ago my sister turned 61, I wonder if she was sober enough to remember. I have no idea since I haven't spoken to her in about two years. My other sister will turn 55 in October, but she won't be celebrating because she drank herself to death at 51. Is it just me, or is this totally stupid?

Tracks

I left my muse in tears in Grand Central Station on a thursday morning. It broke my heart to see her like that, eyeshadow smeared with tears, her lip trembling under the black lipstick. The wings on her shoulders hung like prayer flags in the rain. Her fishnets were torn and her boots were scuffed, and she was tearing pages out of her copy of the Tao and setting them on fire with a pocket lighter. She was trying so hard to look bored and jaded, but it just made her look even younger than she was. A train whistle wailing across the plains in the deepest dead of night, moving always farther away, that's what her sorrow was like.

I didn't mean for it to be like that, it's just that when I get anywhere near train tracks I get hungry for leaving. The last thing I ever wanted to do was make her cry. But I think too much when I'm in her arms, and tonight I just wanted to hear the rails sing. I just wanted to chase the sunset. I know when I get where I'm going she'll be there waiting.