A Walker in the City

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Astringent day in early winter
when all the angels have been let out
of their cages. The wet blue beak
of morning, sky skidding on ahead

or flying – the sky – flying laundry.
Shunting cirrus back and forth (sky)
swerving its tracks boing-boing
rubber as a ball highing

the bluest bit of hush at the centre
of a jaunty girl’s jaunty eye.
Caloo Calay, arias she out (but soft
away). Then shining all

and sure vaults she the wind’s
cathedral stamping booted feet
lifting a hand unmittened, yes,
the better to balance welterweight

wind (flying fists) on a wet fingertip.
Hello again, hello. It’s me (it’s only me).

•

City bristlin’ gloves today, handless,
cut off at the wrist. That’s
supplication at best, at worst
the bait ’n grab of a supple leather

up-yours beneath her seat on the no. 61
uptown. As blue as that mitten
flash-frozen into prayer on this morning’s
path. Yes, gloves gathering

in all the world’s soiled places
where she’s too long stared
herself down. Dear termagant,
like all collectors despairing

the end of the collection. Left
hand to match bleating calfskin
(no. 5½) or missing hand-
combed angora in damson

and plush. Brisk brisk, a walker
in the city, stoops & strides, blush
blush away, glove clutched jittery
in hand, hand in hand.

•

That girl again, ho! A walker
in the city measures distance in feet
defeats lengthening lamppost gaps,
width of a line scrawled

on a hasty page. As if walking
merely to conjugate the season’s
crackling yellow declensions.
But winter now... winter

and the world funnels inwards,
declines, ah, elegant
within cagey astrakhan, between
closed lids, lips. Let’s

catch her, moth-girl, against the lit
page, against flying leaves
herself, selving, angular & awkward.
Girl with a name like a shrug,

a one-handed wave, terse
in the fly-leaf of some book
of posthumous queries. How many
shoes did Dante wear out

while writing the Commedia?
Breathes she a prayer (a curse)
cast visible in discrete
indiscreet puffs before sweeping

to heaven on an updraft. Meanwhile
thighs she hard and trim
the street to her stride, alive
alive-o! A spasm of agape

gaping open in her throat
and morning
swinging sideways, flaring open
with her coat.

•

Like the last of the summer bees,
dazed, dashing for hothouse interiors
bumbling the pockets of windbreakers,
satchel linings. This longing

for God that springs unholy water
gushing to the mouth as if
at the scent of meat grilling. Every year
’round this time summer tenses

past, a frantic bird flying
out of her mouth, flying south. Well-cut
eyes, curt temples: she loses
her temper more & moreish, allowing

thus everyone else to keep theirs.
Darkens, then, penitential violets
beneath her eyes. The people in this city
like strike-on-anything matches,

blazing friendships on street corners,
in elevators. Ready to rub heads
with anyone, everyone, flaring briefly
in the dusk. Ah recompose

my disquiet. (Observe, watch
how she licks her fingers
between the pages of a book.) Look,
just as well considering the darkness

falls each year not all of which
can extinguish the light
from a single cigarette, not
all the darkness. One day

mid-winters she a fist, pocket-
deep. Pulls out, frail & brown,
blown, the corpse of a thought
lost months ago
buzz
buzz

•

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