After Frank O'Hara

APERITIF

(after frank o’hara)

 July 15th, the day after Bastille Day

yesterday there was a party

down at my corner bar and the French Bistro by it,

I had two cocktails and a whiskey

among friends laughing, eating little snacks,

now i’m sober

sitting at a park near Grace Cathedral

no San Francisco fog to bless me or the robins that play

on the grass this morning.

The ancient wooden bench I am on

is as old as Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems

which I read as I also think of my times in New York City,

sitting in a Soho cafe with a friend

writing, playing, watching pedestrians under a winter sky,

daydreaming of travel, a current love

now and then

are so very different now,

so I go back to Frank’s poems

which are making me laugh and smile

my robins have long gone to the clouds.