NEXT

In one of Barnes and Noble’s
windows, I was eating one of Musselman’s
applesauces and reading one of Merwin’s
poems and watching one of Shiva’s
sunsets and thinking one of Sam’s

thoughts about how I’ve come to accept
the writing on the white air,
that I am owned by this name, 
a tight knot dragged through centuries
of dust—thinking about words and how

the molecules of a snow flake join hands
to span across the darkness; about cells
dividing at the smiling speed of light
and how it’s all the same story of a small,
hungry umbrella crawling out of a cave,

and even the sky in its violet wealth
does not own a single electron, and yet
there is a balance that maintains
normalcy on a winter Sunday, allowing us
to coagulate here in the holiday

season and laugh at John Gray’s
latest scheme while we sway in line
anxiously waiting for something else,
while a tiger in a jungle calls
our name, while the prostitute in silky, red

boredom and the cars plunging through
yellow lights call our name, while the misplaced
magazines and germy doorhandles
call our unspoken name, and a clerk
with a mole on her cheek, and two cups

of coffee anchoring her legs
calls our name, and suddenly
I am next, and step forward alone
into the sunlight of her fluorescent gaze
and relish the strange pollen

of a moment that is mine.