Here we are, six billion years or so in the making. Some long way we've come from the cave status, huffing around with no indoor plumbing or written language. Some way we've come.

Today, as I was coasting down Main St., on my way to school, I stopped at a red light, peering at my fellow commuters, sipping coffee, enjoying their sacred defrost and morning radio talk shows. Then, as I swiveled my head to the left, I caught a glimpse of Phoenix Park where sleeping bags and shopping carts scattered themselves among the rot iron benches. Shabby men and women laid themselves over blue chess tables like they had lost the world championship of 1981.

Some way we've come.

Triangle Park

As day breaks, delicate as languid tongues,
he is a void, melted into gutters
where rain water reflects in patterns
of rippled orange.

His spine slouches against
a skyline, breaking from earth,
imprisoned by the sky.

This exhale, this puff of morning
smoke over brick buildings
beneath peach moon blue,
circles his head.
He is empty.

She is imprinted on the street line
creases of his palms, Parisian scent
on the underside of his tongue.
She is transient, coveted, sifted
through frozen hourglasses,
as loved as death.