In the morning:
the rattle of the struggling
ventilation system
in the underground garage
blends with the chatter
of a hundred wild parrots
clamoring in the naked poplars
in the park next to the office towers.
a complaint against the frigid
red december dawn?
I wonder if they remember
somewhere in their
emerald feathered breasts,
a fruited forest,
of plenitude and warmth,
where the sweetest fruits lie
close to the serpent's
unblinking eye.
--------
In the afternoon:
The Salvation Army lady,
well wrapped in Christmas muffler,
plays her butterscotch-sweet harmonica song
outside the Jackson Street Safeway.
She's as cheerful as her bucket.
Three girls, two boys,
-none of them past thirteen-
skitter up the sidewalk laughing.
The youngest boy tosses a cup in the air
and fails to catch it.
Ice scatters across the pavement
landing near the feet of an old man
sitting on the edge of a planter.
He's swathed in many cast off layers,
and all his goods are stashed in bags and bundles
stacked between his knees.
The children dash across the street
and one of the girls hoarsely whispers,
-you almost hit that old man!
The kid who'd tossed the cup
tosses a taunt over his shoulder
in a voice that has yet to change
-fuck you! and laughs with all the
unbottled and unconscious glee
and naive cruelty that beardless boys
sometimes overflow with
and whom we hope grow out of it
before they own a business
or run for office.
Three young men with neatly trimmed beards
and casually hip office attire, pass me by.
one of them says
-they have some pretty good shit
and the portions are really big.
Coming down the causeway off the bridge,
the sky behind the skeletons of the new towers
rising South of Market is colored more
like Easter eggs than Christmas,
and no one on the bus has any news yet
about the body that washed up yesterday
on the rocks at the north side of the island.
