(Genesis 3:8)
Showers on and off all day, light drained of edges.
Along the pavement, umbrellas flat
as flowers on garden flagstones after rain.
Skyscrapers rooted wet and vegetable,
making vague green cathedrals
of the streets. People’s faces turned to the harbor
wind’s honey sting of sleep—eight million
dreams of paradise persist, migrant mist
on the mirror of this metal made flesh.
On these days, we are a city floating
lonely as a water lily,
lapped by elements, rich in isolation
from our race, no tongue too foreign to bloom,
no lordly hand to tear us from our stem.