Excerpt


embodiment

All the babies are crying on the number 9 bus.
At Clark Drive, beautiful girl gets on, body
swaying,
freckled breasts, belly below blue shirt smooth
and round and brown,
hair long, resplendent, red.
Judging mind takes in: round hips, shadow of
underwear in thin white pants.
Judging mind chatter: how could she show
so much?
Intrigued.

I close my eyes and wander in and out of
vastness.

By Main Street she is old, and offered a seat by
polite young men in hip hop orange,
her hair chopped off and dry, boobs sagging
in same faded and worn blue shirt,
belly hanging over pants.
Judging mind turns away. How could she?

I close my eyes and wander, swaying, in and out
of vastness.

By Granville she is stooped, body twisted,
unshapely,
face pulled down by stroke and whiskered.
She drools and cannot feel it.
She stands uncertainly, stumbles.
Hands reach out to catch her.
judging mind: pity.

In and out of vastness.

By Macdonald she is gone to spirit.
This body time so brief, a cross town bus ride.

In and out. Vastness.

At alma I get off the bus, walk five blocks
to where ocean touches city,
and swim again in deep delicious salt.