Crossing this balding and broad-
shouldered city alone in early winter—
still tasting faintly those bitter endnotes
of a very aggressive autumn
which still linger like burnt toast on the
thin morning air—and knowing
it's still just a little too soon
for those peppermint-soothing
diversions of fiber-optic barber-
pole holiday fare—this is the moment
when there's really no forest
toward which this street's column-collated
trees can aspire; when the strange projections
of daily life, caught between such frivolous
and complex preoccupations, feels like they
might as well be broadcast from Mars.
Suddenly, summer was a laughable theory.
Everything is cold and small and concrete—and yet,
still a little soft, too roomy, and strangely light
for its size—like a movie set
that's all held together with spit
and little bits of insulation, with
gaffers' black tape, union electricians' chewing gum
and craft services' leftover peanut butter, where
everything's only temporary, all is
just for show—intended by the higher-ups
and executive producers, only to give
the casual impression—not of a cast and crew
fused in commercial cooperation,
but of an entire civilization
all having agreed—that this distracted nexus
between the past and the future tense
will be believable, was
wanted, and is doable.
