I asked you to help me there on the street, a stranger,
with the homely strength of breakfast, a pear sliced on a platter,

the pattern repeating in the pancakes overlapping one another,
spirals on the plate, and the circles of moisture, your cup and mine

on the lacquered wood.  That strength i felt as your hand gripped my arm,
and you pulled me, awkward and embarrassed, to my feet. 

Breakfast did follow and conversation over tea in the pear and maple
fragrance.  later we exchanged books & small notes

printed on the backs of postcards that held the faces of heroic women
and men offering intoxication to the world. 

We shared love, courage and the heady wine of possibility. 
We climbed a mountain, to breathe danger and release,

hiked above the clouds past men and women much younger than ourselves,
outdistanced by one old crone who’d climbed the Alps. 

She asked us, like most strangers do, if we were sisters,
though we were born a thousand miles apart to different mothers. 

Now we sit as far apart as the mothers who bore us, each of them
thrusting into the world a squalling wanting energy which we send

translated but unrefined across these many miles.
Love like a feather brushes silent ground,

or like symbols clattering crashes outward from our centers
to the overlapping brilliance of the unreachable stars.
                                                                        1/30/1989