Woodstock, like Carmel,
tries too hard to be
what it thinks it was.
Dueling Bob Marley posters
and acid rock T shirts
hang off wooden porches on which,
they would like you to imagine,
Joni Mitchell might have written
a tune or two.
But she's long gone.
As Jeffers is from Carmel.
And people like us
come to gaze
at people like us
who came to graze.
And it's all somehow
tawdry
so we flee to the mall
on the strip in Kingston
which looks like Central Ave.,
anywhere,
and watch the prequel
to Star Trek,
eat a Subway and soft serve
and are,
at least,
rid of the pretension that
something transcendent
is happening here.