Francis
By Laura Spagnoli

Almost famous for catching a pigeon
that crashed the unexpected prison

of a bodega while everyone watched—
you stroked the wings, looked

for wounds, said a word
and she flew from your hands.

You liked to wander the blocks
where cashiers bet the clock

in narrow restaurants,
past twilit drinking haunts

you couldn’t go in and ice-cream trucks
hawking sweets, old music locked

in helpless off-key cheer—
you could hear

it still by the abandoned lots
grown wild with knotweed and burdock

that broke through concrete for sun.
You imagined a garden in one,

as if ruin were a chance for oasis—
it was your gift to find greatness

in things, to explain how you’d grow
your peas and tomatoes,

even a grassy space
for the mutts and strays

at your door like a broken parade,
lined up wherever you made

home—your gift to help
that pack of mismatched snouts

and paws to the other side
of the mortal wide

streets you made it across,
last great saint of the lost.