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.