PALM TREES BURN TOO, WITHOUT WIND
Under the warming sun I walk the Embarcadero. I watch the seabirds flock to one side of the sky and to the other, runners dodge strollers, sidewalk merchants yell out to anyone, including me. I appear to be the slowest on the path, so I stop to rest, the sun is out now, the bench is even too warm, I take off my sweater and sweat for a moment in the light. Palm trees burn too without wind, almost I can smell them from across the street. Too hot now for a cigarette I head for La Cantina, sit down at a bar that overlooks sailboats racing, order a half carafe of Portuguese Pino and ciabatta. The bartend asks me “open or closed?”, expecting some form of plastic, but instead I hand him all the cash from my back pocket and say closed, please, he counts the loose tender and hands me back six wrinkled dollar bills, I put up my hand as if to say no thank you and take the first drink of the cold yellow wine. I look out to the white caps in the harbor and see the taught polyester sails of the running J-boats. In my head I can hear the halyards slapping against the mast, and I can feel the strength of the sheets as they heave over my gloved palms, as the bow and stern of the long and effective haul try and find balance while cresting the swells. I keep watching the small regatta; a smaller vessel takes the lead in a windward barge as the larger lateen sails lose surface area to the modest Bermuda sloop. Another drink from the thin glass sends me to a memory of my own temperate bay, laying out on the fiberglass deck, down below a portable record player slowly spins “Uno Mas”, loons and gulls rap above the quite mainsail while the haul cuts the saltwater north toward Vashon Island, at the island we would dock for the night and hoist paper lanterns in place of our sails and sing to the vinyl. My thought interrupted as the bar around me begins to fill up with late-lunchers or early drinkers. Turns out I didn’t need the bread, last drink of sweet cold wine and out of the Cantina and onto the hot street again. I gracefully roll a tight cigarette, and quickly after its creation light it with a match. I smoke the tabacco down neatly and walk to the rail that separates the city from the sea; look out to the leaving race, under the Bay Bridge to circumnavigate Sausalito I presume, the small craft still holds fast in the lead.
