Morning was seemingly impenetrable, fog thick as clotted cream. I biked through a downtown populated by construction workers and old men pulling oxygen tanks behind them; individuals would emerge suddenly, as if ghosts, as if images in a darkroom ... only to disappear again, around the corner, into an alley or scaffolding, as if to shift shape and reappear as something else to another unsuspecting tresspasser. Architectural details disperse in a translucent wet velvet, droplets of glass, cornices, brick. Time trembles in fog.

. . .

When I arrived at work, I made a cuppa coffee and listened to Tibor's jukebox.

Listen to the last song, "High Flying Bird" sung by Judi Henske, and tell me you can resist having a one-person-only dance party in your cubicle.

. . .

Hear that? A shouting. Calls
from birds of unseen feather.
The whispering tide,
incandescent car lights.

Where was your shadow
freeways effaced by a golden haze
saplings clapping in a parking lot
lofty buildings bereft of crowns
stolen by a thief in ether

as if
a city had sheared itself from all things solid
rise as a kingless realm among the clouds
for a morning a city could
abandon its stubbornly persistent illusion;
wear new ones as solid as winter fog

become polysemantic
as this moment, pearly
double-barreled
custom-fit for your hand

take it; become
genius, criminal, or both.





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