Pack your map

Cartographer

Your map of the city sounds like a record

come to the end in a hissing coma

backsliding tone arm non-plussed

by the snare beat nipping at your heels.

Acetate overlays congeal in frozen layers

street grid visible underneath, your stuttered

declaration of faith a broken black line

binding a good day’s work into a tidy parcel

you fit neatly in the suitcase

with the telescoping handle

a grounded pilot dragging a string

of crash landings smoking through a gleaming terminal

tiny plastic wheels dissolving in a frenzy

of a thousand small bites.

Our maps cross paths

well-honed knife on a steel, keen edge

a tightrope, balance parceled out in motes

God in His wisdom, keeping you honest. 

I nodded in passing last night

heading home, north on Main

crossing gates down at Lincoln 

looking for you in the rearview mirror

Lebanese takeout on the front seat

cooling a little with every heedless boxcar. 

Shell game

Sea Turtle

Looking back

there’d been no time

for questions; satiny

ribbon of light

pulling us down

to the high tide line

sketchy glyphs

arranged pell mell

a history of the melee

at the feathery edge of hissing foam

and plastered wrack

soft leathery backs

purged in briny plunge

cleansed of sand

answers suspended, adrift 

plainly written

on every single grain. 

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night

U.S. Mail Storage Box

The first leg of my nightly walk viewed

from above, the top of my head

a bobbing pie plate in the pale moon light

while the desultory clerk within

shuffles papers among drifting stacks

would betray speed, heading, my mood

telegraphed perhaps by scissoring limbs.

The U.S. Mail storage box at Sixth and Knowles

by the Old Fire Alarm building, pitched

off plumb on a frost heaved slab, stamped steel lock

box ordinary at best even on

the Fourth of July, dutifully drab

dour in passing unless you happen to

know (embossed near the bottom of the door)

this faithful public servant and I were

born the same year to acclaim of a kind.

Each sizes up the other nights like this.

He stands a little taller, manages

a wry smirk while I pretend not to have

noticed the rust choked hinges and key slot

grateful for darkness, nodding politely

humming a tuneless something in passing

the bright lights of busy Main Street ahead

a place of reprieve when viewed from above.

Cutting A Rug

Dance Class

Bear down! I urge, bear down! Under my breath

beneath leaden skies of gross motor farce

lumbering bear on a chain, tasseled fez

a thimbled crown, symbol of gravity’s  

defiance, straining in my winter coat

to strike a pose on an upturned parfait

cup, nose thrust into the prevailing breeze

in a fruitless search for the beat, lurching

across vast parquet plains toward our big dance

number, your beauty unbearable, my

lost, aching heart shifting from paw to paw

in slow waltz time.   I recall our last dance

when you were nine or ten, Mahlathini

and the Mahotella Queens at the Ark

the floor in front of the stage packed, whirling

with your head thrown back, outstretched arms, eyes closed

a wedding in your future, a smitten

bear committing the night to memory.

First steps a doozy

Morning

Gravity swells and rears its fearsome head

here in the unmoored hours before dawn

a sea monster of such vast proportion

asleep, submerged but for this sweeping bite

of scaly nape.  A ginger probe with one 
half blind toe, reassuring beyond all

reason.  Blithe as a tick on the hind end

of a surly cur I set off searching

for the mornings  first cup of muddy blood

a staggering baby, my rendezvous

with immutable law fast approaching.