A.D. Winans

Lost Summer of Love

We made love in this house
That long-ago Summer of Love
Here in the Haight Ashbury
The sun beating its head against
The window shades
Of the old Victorian structure
Where we jammed on the floor
All-day and night
Posters of Janis Joplin
And Jimmy Hendrix on the walls
An empty six-pack
A burned-out roach for company
Making music with our bodies
As the nine-to-five crowd prepared
Their death march to work

Passing this house decades later
Janis and Hendrix long gone
The months the years piled-up like litter
I watch a cat in the alley
It’s back raised
Stakeout its territory

Visions of that Lost Summer of Love
Flicker inside my head ignites a fire
Extinguished quick as a blink

Death crawls sideways up the banister
Steals my memories carries them away
In an empty satchel

 

A.D. Winans is an award-winning San Francisco poet and writer with over sixty books published. Awards include a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature, PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing.  He edited and published Second Coming Magazine/Press from 1972-1989.