Vespers

From 1998. Revised.

One, two,
three, five–seven-nine,
eleven
dark brothers
at sunset:
wetsuited surfers
off the beach at Del Mar.

The bell for vespers tolls
from the seacliff mission.

Two parallel acolytes
in this year’s hot fighter jets
arc south toward
San Diego.

What is it about
the brotherhoods
that men form
that makes me want to watch them
for hours and hours?

I pose that question
to Angela, crazy plaintalker
from the Encinitas streets,
while we sit in a booth
and mull over her fabulous life
in this bar called
“The Saloon”.

Two hours pass.
I’m buzzed and no closer to my answer
though I have heard
all of her own thoughts
about men
and their missions:

she’s told me how
once she was a clerk typist
and then she was an engineer
but the boys at the Atlas-Titan plant
made it so hard for her
to hold a job there
that she walked away
(and it’s been a while
so she doubts it’s still there — )

so now
instead of gliding toward the stars
with the boys
she lives with a man
who’s a hundred years old
and tonight she’ll be damned
if she’s going home again
because he is so
damned
angry all the
time.

In the booth across the aisle
two women are
kissing
and Angela
flashes a smile full of surprisingly
white
wild woman teeth
at them
and then at the
bartender, who is watching them and
squirming.

“It’s right,” she says to him. “It’s right. 
Leave them alone.
Couples in love ought to kiss.
Everyone here is just fine.
Everyone ought to do just
what they like.”

I get up to leave and ask her if I
can take her somewhere.
She thanks me but says she never
gets into a car with a strange man.

Back in Rancho Santa Fe,
in my expense account
movie star hotel room,
I open the window to let
the night breeze bring me
the scent of camellias.

Downstairs, other
businessmen are
drinking Scotch
and pounding veranda tables
for emphasis,

while somewhere in Encinitas
an angry old man waits for dinner
as pilots’ cheeks flatten in the force of the turn
and monks fall off to profane dreams
while engineers stew
before their monitor’s blue fire —

and somewhere
ecstatic Angela
builds a new world right around our ears
by challenging nervous bartenders
and refusing to be with anyone.
In the starry dark she walks the beaches
to do just what she likes,
free of strange men.