i remember an old building in San Luis Obispo, California -- and as I left and turned the corner I saw her. She was me.

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Each day she appears in her goodwill
rags, her thin white hair peeled back
from her bony face, her eyes focussed
on the distance of the next step,
her steps painfully slow and measured.

Light and shade cough out images
for desire's discriminating gaze --
self retreating in dreamy suspension.

But there are too many corners
for this non-poetry, and shadows
cast by nothing, her eyes tracing
surfaces which cannot look back.

How strange to be someone, watching
someone and being watched from this
corner or any other, without
the distraction of a question,
the human warmth of a simple hello...

passing like a ghost through the years;
passing in her faded red slacks
and shabby coat, her slippers
scuffed paper thin.

She shakes her head and mutters
to herself, her sore feet walking
down long streets of indifference,
a blur of colors in the wind.

"I am here," she is saying.
"Can't you see me?"