Riches

That afternoon

when I was so mistaken:

Ten thousand monarchs

clung to the naked August boughs

of a buckeye and I thought-

-that they were the dead

orange and black striped leaves

that had yet to fall

onto the dismembered sidewalks

that buttressed the old road

from February floods.

Then they fluttered

and my heart stopped.

so to speak.

I'm saving that for another day,

the final one.

when I hope that I can bring them back

one more time.

And I might not have the touch of your hand

just below my heart like the night we met.

But I still feel it anytime I want to bring it back.

As everlasting as the feathers

of the delicate lithographic wings

of Archaeopteryx. Forever.

The main thing

The water main

on Sturgeon Street

burst Saturday afternoon.

Left tiny, scalloped

waves of silt

in the gutter.

The mother who lives

across the street

handed bags from Target

to her awkward son.

He ran up the stairs

without looking back

at her deliberate pace.

She had most of the bags.

Now the kitchen faucet

sputters and hisses:

all is well, all is well.

In the kingdom

Given a chance,

the vegetable kingdom

exploits any twenty grams

of soil.

Lodged in any crevice

where water drips from a roof

a flag pole or a phone line,

a rivulet across the asphalt

gives a sip, a kiss,

a royal flush

from a deck stacked

against anything green

or flesh or giving a shit

about any aspiration.

The moon was wreathed

in a veil of steam,

a gauzy bride hotly gazing

at this balcony on the 14th floor

where I sought a ghostly breeze.

I could smell the chicken

grilling on the street below

but not the flowers or the sweets.

The traffic had yet to sleep.

It was morning back home and the tv said 

the hills were burning once again.

The thief and the thug cuddled up

and devised their schemes to deceive

in the city on a finger of the Baltic.