Perspectives On The Circle

The sun
is quiet up there.
Nothing comes out of it.
But you know what it’s doing--it’s raging.
Behind the crowns of our buildings
it’s burning beyond itself,
it does not know
it burns.
The plane rushes over us
with sounds like a giant silver funnel
and beside me, men from Chinatown
who seem like they must be
130 years old
eat sesame cookies, put their
canes and caps up on the bench,
we are all warmed like god feathers.

We have faces like numerals.
We look at each other
and recognize something.

Blue-pink feet are aired, a bicycle
can be ridden through
the rubbing of two hands, the opening and
closing of hands
like a door.

A fly haunts the cracks.
He is an unmitigated snob. Hairs like
fish’s chin hairs have grown from his back—they are
called legs.

The train looks heavy
as it sways
down the tunnel,
in the tunnel that goes
underneath the dome
the red leaf lies on its back
like a cadaver.
His arms are out. His legs, out.
No one has bothered to arrange him.
No one knows how to identify his face.

The grief of it
grows buds. Red buds and hair. Thick gray hair.
Like roots, like the tails of rats, like Birch trees.