Seen in Passing While Walking Down King Street

Did you see those girls on the corner?
Each had a flower in her hair.
They stood in a bunch, waiting…
I’m not sure for what.
They must have been
strangers
in a club together
accosted by a gentleman bearing silk Hawaiian flowers
bound under a secret spell
waiting for something magical to happen
while protesting the war.
But nothing happened.

It was twilight.
The street had just died for the day,
and was coming alive again.
I was walking,
when a flower fell from the sky
and landed in my hair.
I tried to remove it, brush it away,
but the flower stuck
and my hand stuck to the flower
and all I could to was stand there, and watch,
as other flowers fell on other girls who gathered,
stranded,
stuck to the sidewalk.

“Do you see those girls, on the street below?
I wonder what they’d do if I dropped flowers out the window.”
says the boy with the magic lei.