carrier

In the backyard, I wait

For the clouds to kneel before

The moon. I have stood quietly for hours

Where the workers go to catch their busses

In the rain, fumes spewing past stacks

Across the highway, where the flames arise

Within the web of machinery but do not consume.

So few know where to keep a heart.

Not me. Is it beyond Malcolm X park, after the rusted tin

Of the dome and used needles buried in the grass?

Or where Haverford meets 58^th and the whole

Road system turns on itself drunkenly

While an obese woman does her oldest daughter’s hair

While her son looks on, squinting into the sun?

We whittle our thumbs away

At plastic bags and the scribbled screens

Of cellphones as the night comes,

As the night ends, as we face the day

With red rimmed eyes. Is it there, in the thousand thousands

Racing along to get –

Let me be specific.

This world is broken,

But beautifully so,

With windows in the earth

To all that we are, and all that we could be.

I squat down close to the pavement

Bare feet on bits of mica

Just outside the two windows I spraypainted,

And the light goes out,

I smell gas from the grill and the sweat in my

hair—today was 13 hours of grueling reaching,

Today was untired hoping,

Today was quite alone,

And we should say it over and over—

Certainly today I felt swollen and alive

With all the grass and unwashed uniforms,

With all the granite built into countertops

And bones into necklaces, with all the children

Still awake in their tents of linen,

And foxes licking matted hair,

And buzzing flying things circling their little lives

And all the tired hands of bartenders grazing

Glasses, with all the skin calling to other skin,

And all the hearts beating alone to keep the damn thing going.

Sometimes the waiting is more.

No tears come.

Tonight it is more darkness than moon.