Possessed by secret tempos
and surging
like a great hot
chorus through the city,
furtive, urgent-as-lava
though and past
the gaps between
a huddled few,
around
ambling dozens,
beyond mute
fantastic hundreds—yet
desperately dependent
on every last scrap
of their late-
afternoon shadows, positively
lusting
after their unwitting,
their trivial and
haphazard company—like so much
gratuitous roadside litter
with which
to insulate
your warm and private fort.
