Sipping his Miller Lite

poured tall and foaming

into a chilled champagne fute

watching the wind blow the palm trees

swaying high above the trolley tracks

overlooking Mission Bay,

I'm reminded of my younger years

drinking Miller from clear bottles

laced with formaldehyde

with the hockey team

out in a corn stalk stubbed field

on a frigid northeastern November night

without the usual bonfire that might have drawn

undesired attention from the raiding,

interloping squadrons of small town police.

*

His place is pristine

in its tasteful

bachelor-esque

orderly dusted decor,

and I ponder the Chicano

Rights activist he was while I

was a shivering kid in my suede saddle shoes,

straight legged Levi's and Dean sweater

dodging the municipal under-aged beer bash busting militia,

and who I might have become

had I not shied away from a first kiss

delivered later that year in my mother's backyard

under the vernal moon. Through how many crossroads

had he maneuvered before landing here,

in his glass faced, china silk lined perch

overseeing the life he'd built himself.

*

There is no telling, no looking ahead and no going back.

Just the constancy of onward motion

towards undeterminable destinies

continually altered by selectivity. Just

the linkages the mind makes

furling the unbid past forth

with derailing velocity.

Just aged wisdom

acknowledging the absence of time

and the fleetness of life.