And In Closing

I remember 1959 walking down Pier
Avenue in Hermosa Beach hand in
hand with my mother passing a coffee
house with this huge sign that said
The Insomniac on it in jagged letters
with abstract art on the sidewalk and
how mesmeric all these people sitting out
front were but then I can also remember
much later almost ten years just one
block up the same street I was there
in the Either/Or Bookstore and lost it
high on the poems that were all inside
these what are nowadays quite rare
and expensive small press collectibles
but at that time just publications I held
in my hands as the purest of light