Wandering, and the Echo of Wandering

I don’t love music and neither do you.

Neither does anybody. You prefer

to create vacancies. You prefer to take

all the street sound, wind scraps, engine barks

and press it down. You prefer to sweep

over its smoothness with the back of your hand.

You prefer company you can count. Each song

is a blanket you can clean and change

and snap across the bed so it drifts

lightly downward through puddles of air

which you love because it’s as if

your gesture created them.

You love to expose oceans.

You love to cruise a finger

over long splits in glass.

You love to rest your hand

in the old shallow prints

of the sidewalk.

You love to touch the stereo

while it plays. Both vibrations at once

or neither.

The city is not a jungle and neither are you.

Not anymore. The jungle burned down.

The government planted new trees in its ashes.

Territories of shade in nice rows.

Perpendicular lines have learned

to intersect without ever forming a corner.

History and engineering are the same,

and until I started traveling barefoot

I never noticed how much of pavement

is dressed in glass crumbs.

I never noticed how all shadows

fall toward their light.