For my friends's Bar Mitzvah, all of our journeys
to manhood now complete, we were awarded
a new journey, an hours ride on the Goodyear Blimp.
We bobbed up over the smog
like a ball through water as the captain rolled down
the window to smoke a cigarette,
respectable for our sluggish pace.
We floated over the Saturday Southland,
the Pacific, the packed Rose Bowl
where tiny men crept about, a three car
pile up on the 101 north near Hollywood,
over the general frenzy of metropolis
and the tops of seagulls.
We had pennies in our hands, but this newly
anointed manhood had affected our dispositions,
upsetting the balance of old braveries,
not knowing if it was better to be a man or a boy,
or if there was even a difference.

And today the blimp rolls over Portland,
it's function I can not guess-
so misplaced in this cloudy sky,
a bird lost from it's formation-
spying on what I can only guess at;
the growth of trees, the rain drops
on the Williamette, the hippies in the park
beating on their drums, our street car line
sadly working its way back and forth,
or perhaps it has come for me
and that's a hand I see from the open window,
clenched and holding what I left
between the seats fourteen years ago, that
puff of an idea I held so briefly, of what
it might be to be a man and live like my father,
to achieve what can only be achieved
without laced fingers and song.