She asked me to meet her at a bar I can’t remember
the name of, though I know it was in Minneapolis

and it was daytime, because it was a daytime
conversation where you try to see things clearly,

though the sunlight doesn’t really penetrate
into what you’re saying, and the people

in the bar are hoping hard for night. I don’t remember
if we ate lunch, or if that would have felt

too permanent, so I think we sat at a table
and maybe drank a beer, and I listened to her

talk, which was rare, and I could tell
she’d rehearsed her speech, but I could see

she believed it, and I knew as she spoke that she
was discovering a truth in her words, and I loved her

for what she said, truly, deeply, because she was
making us both feel like adults, not in some

starchy untrue way but adults, as in people who
are facing adversity and have lost their fantasies somewhere

in the neighborhood and they’ve wandered off for good,
but the adults still want to take the naked longing

that informed the fantasies and turn it into
something that might abide — and she said

I’ve been thinking about us and your move out here
and how hard it must be for you to be alone

without friends in a new place, confused about
yourself, and I’ve been thinking that maybe

we could help each other. Recalling her words I feel
myself wanting to cry, and see her sitting there,

courageous, upright, caring, intrepid, in the midst
of discovering something I hope has stood her

in good stead, though we haven’t seen each other
in decades, though her words didn’t prevent

the drinking and the pain and the breaking up
and coming together and the driving through

the winter snow in Wyoming and the arrival
in San Francisco and the night I dumped her

out of her sleeping bag and the last night
we saw each other in the bar

on Geary Boulevard, when I sulked and — now
just a tourist in my life — she ignored my sadness

and told me what a great city this is,
then held my hand for an hour in the car

outside her new place and stepped out of
my life, moved back to Minnesota and married

some brake man on the railroad and had a couple of kids
and no doubt got old. But I remember her in that bar

in those two minutes when she told us both something
new, that maybe we could help each other, and if only

I could dwell in the essence of that moment
with the sunlight streaming down

through the front window and her sitting there
discovering what I hope has been the place in herself

that she returns to again and again where we could
help each other if we chose, if we thought it was

worth it, if we could get out of the way
of our own ruined lives long enough to simply

sit still and listen, listen, listen.