Breathe in our air
oh bird man -
tattered cow-licked hobo – your
world out of touch -
We watch his tattered shuffle, an
imaginary fist-cluster of
shells he casts at
lead-pipe colored pigeons
until their feathers disperse.
They join him in a dance over broken glass;
remnants of somebody’s
shattered Granddad
that glint like
spangled mummer’s sequins -
fancy division;
he feeds them, thoughts
skeined in sunlight,
of faded day,
absorbed into the
ambered haze in
the cardboard tesseract
of an old man’s mind.

Then a distant breeze,
like a drawn bath,
falls from Whitman’s Mickle home,
fondles him until he turns
and scatters the birds;
he bends down,
puts a picked-up feather behind his ear,
imagines he’s Chief Halftown
deftly stealing back a block
or two from Penn,
then struts his Two-Street rain-dance
out onto Vine.

We scatter our Starbucks
like ambered piss;
wonder how long
before we all get home.