SLAM!

Coming of Age

In the year nineteen hundred and sixty-two,
I took a trip to San Francisco
To attend a student nurse convention there.
My first evening in town I met you.
There, at the Blue Onion, a fellow
And I struck up a conversation. We were a pair.

We were polar opposites. You were taboo,
Worldly and older. Even more so,
A merchant seaman, a hippy longhair.
I was a naive, innocent ewe,
Ripe for the picking. We hit it off presto
And from then on, I did not care
About the meetings scheduled for the week.

We were inseparable, completely into
Each other. You showed me the Golden Gate tableau,
The Turning Basin and the Castro Street affair.
At Haight and Ashbury we strew
Flowers and saw the Janice Joplin show
Live with the Jefferson Airplane fanfare.

Over the ensuing years, our friendship grew.
You were my long-distance hero.
You never married and came to Missouri to declare
Your love to me. We talked and cried beaucoup
Painful tears together and we came to know,
Although a friendship we would always share,
Our separate ways we'd seek.

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