beach trip

I woke up with a cat
in my sleeping bag once,
after hitch hiking to ocean city
with my friends perry herbert
and jim acs.
we crashed on the beach, down
by the dunes, this was way
before the high rise condos went up.
we felt the wind
move up from the ocean,
cold and wet, full of salt.
the stars may have been out.
i'm not sure. we had been drinking
around a fire, talking about
girls all night. baseball.
what we might do with our lives
once we were forced
to join the rest of the world.
we talked about
how we needed to be more social
this trip. which meant
meeting girls.
we had maybe twenty dollars
between us, but figured
on pan handling down on the board
walk to get more.
we wore out the talk about
girls, our lack thereof,
then finished our few beers
and went to sleep.
the cat found her way into my
sleeping back at some point in
the middle of the night.
she never woke me, just
crawled in and snuggled up
against my chest.
I remember her looking up
at me with her glass
green eyes in the morning sun
as if she was where she was
supposed to be.
we never did meet any girls.