A drapery of vast gray
Cloaked the late November sky.
The people moved around rapidly,
Without talking,
Edging toward a sterility which
In their minds was the right thing to do.
The goal was to avoid noteworthiness —
To avoid disaster,
To avoid a news story,
Avoid anything that would be memorable,
Because being at work should not be memorable.
The man was dressed in nice, expensive clothes,
But had a tattoo on his neck,
And seemed wary of interaction,
Seemed wary of truth.
Wealthy men
Filed in and out,
Enjoying lunch on days off,
Making the usual humorous,
Desultory mention of their particular situation.
I’d stopped in to indulge in my religion,
College basketball,
And to get lunch.
The lunch was better than average,
The staff less interested than average in this fact.
Very urbane.
Come enjoy our un-famous buffalo chicken sandwich.
The Irish bar overlooked the town’s minor league baseball stadium.
This was where the neon signs and lights precipitated the smiles,
And amidst the bevy of empty fields
And stomping transients,
That,
In a sense,
Is the true miracle.
Rolling back up home,
Where I would eventually sleep 12 hours a night
And then leave from,
We glided back through the crack head towns,
Where every little
Person peers as if
Into the American Eiffel Tower
Out of a systematized quagmire
To which they’re born in,
Splaying animal intuitions
Onto endless school days
Before entering careers of
Third grade arithmetic.
You ride past these towns
Looking down at your wrists
Thinking,
I hope to God,
By God,
I didn’t just see that,
And then you see it in your wrists too,
Which of course explains why rich people are never happy,
Just a little special…
I had to get out of there again,
But I wondered at the perfection of that little
Christmas Carol juke box,
One allotted,
Compartmentalized section of the calendar year,
Just like everything else,
When you think about it.