Baby things

The cold silver night

shone on the bars

of my infant crib.

A junebug clinging

to the window screen

had a change of mind,

and flew across the moon.

The cool pillow warmed

beneath my cheek.

The world was still too new

to me to easily fall asleep,

but even junebugs

go somewhere to hide before

the burning Central Valley

summer sunrise.

On the phone lines,

so high above

the clothes line

where Mommy hung

Daddy's shirts and sheets

a pair of mourning doves cooed.

A squad of ants

picked at the remains

of a snail,

it's doomed trail

from the night before

still glistening

on the coarse grass

that tickled the soles

of my bare feet.

Mommy dropped

a clothes pin so I seized it,

squeezed open the jaws,

and let them snap shut

on the wilting blossom

of a dandelion

decapitated

when Daddy mowed

the lawn the night before.

The doves perched on

the phone lines cooed

and I cooed back, in thrall.

11:48

She's dressed for a morning

as cool as her childhood

village in Shandong:

warm trousers and a jacket

zipped up to her throat,

floppy-brimmed hat pulled low

over her bob cut silver hair.

Picks through the corner trash

receptacle with her practical

cotton garden-gloved hands.

Underneath the discarded leaves

of an office rubber tree plant,

she fishes out empty Mountain Dew

and Red Bull cans.

He, a white gloves firm lawyer

or hedge fund manager or CEO,

waits at the stoplight in his Bentley Continental.

Peers over his cheaters at her endeavors.

Guns his gleaming anthracite coupe

up the hill to take lunch

or treat himself to a nooner

when the signal surrenders

to his desire for green.

She crushes the cans beneath

her drug store athletic shoes

and stuffs them into a thirty gallon

woven plastic bag.

Redemption pays a nickel apiece

or by the pound. Twenty years

from now -properly invested-

she might have enough to buy

a Bentley for her grandson

to drive in her funeral procession.

what breaks sometimes can't be put back together

the piñata burst.

dumped the sweets

on the patchy summer lawn.

lay there. untouched.

growing stale day by day.

the gay wrappers faded.

the red turned to orange.

the green went to yellow.

all the blue was gone.

and I could never get them

back inside the broken shell,

no matter how I tried

to heal the tissue

once it was torn and frayed.

Angel's breath

I felt the angel's warm breath

on the back of my neck

but it was just

the laundromat's exhaust.

I spun around hoping

for a guardian and found

a hopeful street walker instead.

There's not much salvation

to be had for fifty bucks,

cooking up a spoonful

or renting a body and a bed.

She said, do you have a date?

and let go of the nubby knee length coat

that she clutched at her throat.

Underneath, her dress

barely reached her thighs.

I already have one, I lied.

trying to hide my naivete and pride.

If I'd listened to my body

and not the fires in my head,

I would have received a lesson

about the fusion of two warm bodies

instead of Edward Teller's cold vision

of fission products and isotopes,

countdowns, kilotons, trajectories,

and the price of primo Afghan dope.

I said, I'm just waiting for my bus.

She just smiled and replied,Sure honey,

but if it don't work out, I'll be right here

to take you somewhere where

it's really nice and warm inside.

But the ride I was on took longer,

and the breath that I felt

was no angel's but mine.

Parts unknown

I'm unknown in

Manhattan,

but I can recall it

on waking sometimes

when the universe is kind.

Even if the dream

which has me smiling,

disappears,

and it is just another morning

shower, coffee, magazine,

fragment of a thought, before

I sit down at the screen

to draw a map of a place

I've never been.

some city in Los Angeles,

not Manhattan or Queens.

I was there at seventeen,

no one knew me then,

and might not ever still.

Fries with that

This guy, big bushy beard

and a dirty A's cap,

spreads a box of french fries

on the sidewalk on Front Street.

Stirs and stares at them

like some kind of divination,

the one where a shaman

tosses sticks and reads the pattern.

Chuckles softly and chooses one.

Pops it into his mouth.

Some crumbs trickle down

and stick in his beard.

A nattily dressed, fiftyish man,

slacks, white shirt and tie, blazer,

with dignified, upright posture,

pushes a wire shopping cart

packed with his possessions

down the street.

A boom box in his cart blares

a big marching band version

of My Country 'tis of Thee

followed by the Star Spangled Banner.

He strides with military precision.

Three office hipsters stroll side by side

stepping around the french fry guy.

Talking about bosses and boyfriends

and trying to decide where to go

for happy hour drinks.

The sidewalk french fry shaman

points a limp fry at the hipsters,

laughs and says,

how ‘bout buying one for me?

A family of tourists,

dressed for last week's weather

and looking lost,

peer at maps and apps.

Dad points left, Mom points right,

the girl peeks at the french fries,

the boy stares at his feet.

the gift

that this stony orb

with a molten heart

bathed in a sea of tears

was as right as goldilocks'

middle bowl and bed.

that we have stardust

in our bones.

that microbes and algae

branched and flowered

till sequoias towered

and bower birds

decorated the jungle floor

with bright pebbles

and scarlet flowers.

that it's been sixty five

million years since

the last big asteroid

struck the earth

and that eden's apple

kept on falling til  it landed

on isaac newton's head.

that women's contours

are more pleasing

than adam's rib.

that the menagerie

at lascaux was not

a one time stroke.

that gray whales still

compose new songs

each year and my ear

can find delight in them

as much as bach and rock.

that a dying man

playing a rusty anthem

on a badly tuned piano

still makes me shiver.

that sidewalk sleepers

fill me with shame

and gratitude

that my nights spent

under bridges

have been few.

that love is where

you make it

if you want to.