EAST WEST FALL

Thursdays at noon
with gentlemen and ladies
at Boston's Durgin Park
have their boiled dinners
with choice Chinese tea leaves
baked beans and Apple Betty
facing the waterfront docks
as runaways board ships
with their flower children
off to San Francisco
by uneasy Autumn sleep
to outlast every fortune teller
predicting we will meet
a foreign soul and body
in our future lives
by a last summer rose dooryard
hearing old fairy tales
from our French teacher
wanting to search
with our  outstretched hands
by expressive city lights
beneath unknown addresses
of telephone directories
to find our extended families
reminiscing about our childhoods
from frazzled northeast winds
when October becomes absurd
on a cross country road
and every good intention
lacks eligibility
by a tin roofed setting dusk
lures us from the Atlantic
to the Pacific's breeze
from fluent lunar hours
in new blood moon shadows
moves every unseasoned traveler
to make us somnambulists
under Nob Hill's red eyes.