pilgrimage

Today I went to Staten Island. I took the R train to the ferry, and the ferry to Staten Island, the place where I first met Pomona and Tuna, not at the same time, and not in the same area of Staten Island--which is a big, suburban, strange place a world away from Brooklyn--but just to the water's edge. I stayed only a few minutes, just waiting to catch the ferry back home. I vividly remember both trips, almost eighteen years ago, spring, once to fetch the tiny round ball of kitten Pomona, one month later to get scruffy fuzzy Tuna. How long ago that was. How lucky I was to find each of them.