I.
The wash of stroller wheels reveals the sidewalk’s return to sand.
One pushes another forward into an uncertain future—
mama baby buggy bumper –
our origins on parade, this moment of longing that compels
many to do much, make more. The pusher strides forth
with her antenna, an extension of herself , believing
this one will get it all because after all
there has to be some justice, there’s got to be,
why else would we go on? We do
not throw babies to the wolves, we do the best
we can and sometimes even see
out of the corner of an eye as we cross at the corner
that red longs for green and know
that as the dark of the peopled precipice draws near,
in night dreams, in intersections,
there’s a wilderness of desire from which few ever return.
II.
Heat waves up from the pavement
making the crowd on the other side of the zebra stripe
a subtle chorus line of stern hula girls
waiting to get on with it
waiting to feel the wiggle
waiting to break away from the pack.
From their pausing faces a mixing cloud rises,
collective fantasy: fame, adoration, power.
A smoghead gathered there,
the sum resounds—I can make something.
They surge; static shapes resume.
III.
They’re at the train not to go but to watch
the coming and going of other’s mothers and children, where
they’ve gone when they’ve split, subdivided, incorporated.
The babies want to see the train go by,
all they want’s the whoosh and where-to of it,
transitory mystery. And mothers?
What do they want?
A vision coming, waving bye-bye,
beauty seen—
unscathed, unscorned, reborn.
IV.
Home. Is. Waiting.
A smooth rain descends, gathers twinkling in the grid
of screen, like lights in financial zone high rise windows,
advertise in the night sky:
over here overtime over & out.
Ozone-smelling girl stands in the wedge
between front door and the storm, nose pressed to the mesh,
thinks maybe she can pass through it
like water through a sieve,
come out whole again on the other side.
It would take a long time. It would take
extreme concentration.
Wooden warmth of the door moves away
from her back; parental glare.
There. You. Are.