Iron Rising Out of Iron
Everywhere in Boston by late February/early March
a tidewrack of road sand & corrosive salt
gorging street gutters, bunions hardening
on brain cells, & needle-nosed greyhounds, formerly
sprinters at dead-end racetracks, hooded now
in walking blankets of polyester fleece & leashed
to the owners who adopted them, narcissus-pale
women with Medicare woes. All creatures
in heavy clothing look connected & friendly tho
from the warm side of a south-facing window—
bossa nova singers with smiles everywhere,
everywhere gym rats, & the occasional mail slot
of a dark chador or burqa moving past, a pair of
blue-green eyes behind it watching. You like them
at a distance tho, don’t you?—& you love loneliness
even more—loneliness, which has ways of flowing
over barriers, hidden from sight because vast.
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