And he knew on a Tuesday there was no city but him, no neighbour,
stranger, or mother with pram but
his bronze skull and the iron of him. Under poplar and street signs,
there was the pinched, thumbed-on
iron of him and the iron of them; fastened and fast-disappearing
and headed away. His worry was contour
extending outward for miles, backward for decades, inward for
countless units of measure he’d no slide
rule but song with which to tally. It was the bending back into blue
of high right angles; was the texture
of tree bark like moon rock, and seedpods collected at curbside
alongside wrappers, pen lids, packet foil;
was the bubble and warp of fifteen layers of paint and his saying
“fifteen layers of paint” aloud to cover
the ache rivering down from where his tongue was sewn on through
to his ankles’ rivets. It was him in a fixed
trajectory but spinning and shrinking while a starling looked on,
the concrete abutment looked on. A dog,
sheet glass, orange haze, plumbing, doughnuts in display cases,
chinstraps, cobble-stone, rocket juniper
looked on but stayed upright and offset his dry retching of place
welded in place.