There are few moments of silence
but it comes
through little pores in the skin.
Between traffic and voices
it comes
and I begin to understand those city poems,
small prayers
where we place our palms together
and feel the heart
beating in a handful of nothing.
City poems
about yellow hard hats
and brotherly beggars.
Wasn’t Lazarus one of these?
And now Saint Pigeon of the Railroad Tracks
paces across a child’s small handprint,
human acids etching themselves into metal.
We are all the least of these,
beggars, almsmen,
listening hard to the underground language
of the wrist.
Through the old leather of our feet
city earth with fossils and roots
breathes the heart of soil upward,
the voice of our gods beneath concrete.