A Walker in the City

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Westward ho ho ho. Trudgy with weariness
off the gimlet shift and longing
for the vicious rounding of a little sleep.
But how to get home again, home-sweet

east-best and wee wee wee (all the way).
And she without her wings, without key
or compass or ruby mittens. She lost. Alas,
alack lacks she volition, verily

so tired, you see. Mired in the high
mucky-muck of toil & trouble, wan
and wondering, by the bus stop palely loitering.
Who owns this night the city?

Grain merchants, oilers and bankers, cutpurses,
rogues. I trow, some slithy tove
or other in an office tower ’bove Portage & Main.
The golden lad highballing his legislature

or Worm the Conqueror? She walks
to disown. The Möbius spool
to spool of earth & sky, no joints showing
unpremeditated snowing

and then the lighting of the lamps.

Blinks the hazy orange eye
of a no. 18 cross-town in which an old party
cable-knitted to a flecked rectitude
faces inwards profiling his spruce coin.

Above her dozy lapse
the Heinz baby food baby
agape with joy. Mood Gush
to the Last Spoonerism! Gathers the bus

and rattles them as stones into
one pocket: an old man, tired girl, that beamish
tot shiny as pate. Full
holy at last, one family, at least

for another two stops. Advertisement
for Madonna & Child, St. Joseph gazing
     benignly on
while the past tenses – perfects itself
in the future’s radiant pigment. What the city

offers tentatively, tenderly,
late at night and far away from home:
a stone in the shoe, the body’s thin metal-
fatigued chrome, presentiment of kin

between strangers.

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