Mission Thief

Picking up toward evening

    bay breezes quicken

                The Mission and

                fuchsia petals plop

                onto slabs of root-tilted sidewalk

                a local tectonics we maneuver

                you and I fecund with our

                renewed vows en route

                to La Cumbre with its Aztec

                mural and gorditos

                at the curb, windows opaque,

                a black 75 Cadillac

                rocks high up and drops

                back on pneumatic shocks

    a whiff of carne asada

    poles mummified with posters: 

    Has Visto Este Niño / Thrash Polka at Slims

                while—

  five blocks away

the imminent lays its egg

in the eye of evening and what

begins as tenderness

will end at Calvary

for whose devotion can I claim

to aim wholly at you if holding

your hand even so 

my eyes swivel 

to see the woman at her door

with dim desire or is it

nostalgia finally, mere registration,

an animal impulse

tightens the solar plexus—

only at the crossing only

through horizons—

three blocks away

a white-haired man

the collar of his jacket 

stained with sweat

closes his saddlebags and leans

his bicycle, all he owns,

against the pharmacy wall 

while a panhandler puts down

his bagged bottle

by the lightpost and watches—

you reach for

                my hand as we cross Dolores I spit

                sidewise into my shadow

                when you aren’t looking

                the monitor on a stool outside the Mission Revival 

      plays a live feed

                of the sermon within 

                a bleak scene few men

                one child about twelve

                sweaty preacher’s sthenic rant

                dressed well

                a parishioner slips out

                through front doors but before

                they close, another—one

                of us, the casual assembly of voyeurs—

                ushers herself in:

                so water evaporating from treetops

                siphons water through leaf

                which siphons water 

      through xylem up the trunk 

    from roots maybe when

               one escapes

               the other is sucked inside

               who will rescue her?

               not me and not open-mouthed

    opportunity

               eyeing the bike against the wall—

                                                              we do not see

the man the panhandler steal the bike

though others can

two sparrows titter in fescue

on the traffic island

where we continue to stroll

in urban intimacy the same

tuned rhythm our synced steps

mark us a couple

a couplet on the page of scrawled noise

men sawing pavement at the corner

thick rap bass thumping

from open cars a Harley

growls around Guerrero

Mexican songs at the café we pass

a splash of Mandarin washes over 

the protected pool of our taking-it-in

only at the crossing only through horizons

with roses for sale, approaching the pair

eating at a curbside table,

an ink-haired Guatemalan girl in a red dress

her shyness hovers at the edge of their plates like a fly

the bicycle thief wobbles our way—

long strips of stratus make it

                a dropjaw sunset I stumble and

    from behind you

                catch the swing phase of your walk

                erotic your left foot pigeon-toed

                hips narrow as a boy’s

                but what hatched in the alley and left

    that urine stink and sparrows

                thikke as motes in the sonne-beem

    and two starlings

                their wings scissored behind them

                like mournful rabbis

                I used to imagine strangers naked

                you say now I imagine them in coffins

                the back of our hands touch

                you squeeze my thumb the body

                ambiguously subject and 

                object a dog tied to a fireplug sneezes

                the man passing by says Bless you

                a little sordid and still warm leftover

                flan-yellow of day remains

                before what was once called civil-dark

                when it grew too dim to work and 

                the ice man with his iron-scorpion

                dragged to a kitchen his last block

                already the future is cued up and closing in

    summoning us to what?

                the thief pedals toward us

    though we have not seen him—

                                         when you turn

your face to ask me if 

Mexicans call hummingbirds colibrí

or chupaflor flower-sucker the light

reveals your irises’ steel rims

dark hoops that hold the blue in

and do we invent this privacy

the privilege to brim with each other

as though our rillet might be

deduced from the mainstream

as if we were stirred together

past mere propinquity

and the desperate and enraged

were eased by such a day 

as in that story of the wolf

un-stalking its prey the familiar

rapture I presume you feel

with me even as I tongue

the prickles in my throat

that foretell a cold and step back

to the brink—

of thee, smudged

                newspaper print where your

                fingers brushed your nose

                at once we sense a commotion ahead

                as faces one by one like cards

                when a bet is called 

                flip their open expression

                toward us

                what is happening

                hurtles our way in shouts shouts

    as if something were

    being birthed, alert

                I see the man on bicycle

                under a neon taquería sign— 

    only at the crossing only through

         horizons between— someone yells

                something inarticulate

                almost to us—

 he is racing

recklessly up the sidewalk—startled

pedestrians jump aside—

already plummeting

from prospective to present

his counterpoint

divorcing you from me

from the rhythm of our tangency

our breaking into my and my

I lurch and cannot feel yet and fail to rise

into the revision

of circumstance as though

I tumbled from stairs

to a spotlit stage where you were

cut off from me by the light

a sidewalk of strangers

severed from concerns that seconds prior

perfectly contained them

waylaid and yielding their leads

for the role of audience 

the drama hurrying on its way

the head of event expanding

the dark head of event crowning before us—

and still it is not clear

    what is happening what

    is impinging on us

    an obligation I hear

               an indecipherable whinny of alarm

               the immediate stamping in its stall

    as the thief nears our end of the block

    as light that left a galaxy

    in the Hercules cluster

    600 million years ago

              now burns through the horizon

               and ignites a life

               that was never beyond my seeing

      and the same wakes up from itself

    pain of the eye overwhelmed by light

               while I strain for clues 

    in the surprised faces

               the many misconstrued bodies 

    off balance on pause

                to isolate the bicyclist 

      in his singular tumult

                he who supplants you

                who makes his claim 

      greater on me

                he himself custodian now

                of this present in which

                against inertia I strain to act

                but—

 how quickly he penetrates

the blister of my regard

from which you’ve been extracted

as the world goes quiet

and the event of identification

gathers me into its theme

handlebar and rear-rack panniers

swinging side to side half

standing on pedals whose

wild joggling wide-wet eyes urge

No no don’t stop me

I mean to grab for his arm 

but your hand stays mine and 

from an infinite distance

I recall you

your presence

blows in, a red petal,

three of us

briefly enjoined

pooling our volitions

you tug my shirt

my hand slaps his neck 

half-assed scuffle my

knuckles scrape the stucco wall—

as he flails

                at me I can hear but

                whom do I hear?

                my failure all along

                to secern even you

    who are saying No

                the word rings and through the ring

                a thin scarf of disapproval

                draws across my vague intent

                awkward in the struggle

                to hold him to judge what

                effort to make with whom

                am I thrashing 

                a bent stalk a question mark 

    for a backbone

                my hand touching his shoulder

                so tentative and slow

                the gesture might be taken

                for an act of deputation

      a surplus of devotion the

    bestowal of meaning then

               he stiff-arms me and

               I turn—

                                        like the other

spectators, a pure stare

now a singularity uncoupled once again

that readily from you like the dissolving glow

of a clicked-off light

the floater behind a closed eye

and so combined elements

on the stalk of an instant

unpetal their parts in wind

a hand bleeding a man on bicycle

a murky sense of restraint which is you

breached from the we I presupposed

lifted from the felt

background and placed here again

near but across the caesura

the rent stanza in our accord

as what I am cracks 

into two acts

and one replays the scene

revising it toward—

some imagined salvific end 

    if trajectory 

    is divisible

    I gauge the thief’s increasing

               distance from me

               instinctively as when flying

               I measure the gap

               from jet to ground

               with an image of my body falling

    a red petal

               he veers to the street

    and something summons me again

    a wheeze spins me around

    to see a white-haired man

    in a sluggish run

              slather of mucus under

              pigeon-hole nostrils, his gaze

              nailed ahead at the crossing

              my eyes put on his face

                his mouth a gasping rictus

                as he plods past

                never to catch

                what—

 lulled on routine and self

and casual neglect I let slip

rooted in place around me

a block of storefronts and trees

a man on foot falling farther behind

the one on bike and 

the rest of us unrescued

stopped in time transfixed

to this stark spectacle of our separateness

making its stand

hammering its horizons home

behind which each of us says I don’t know

who you are

you never broke through me

the key makes no sound

when you go to play

the world shifts

along a hairline crack

you can’t tell 

what is happening 

until it moves on and is gone 

as someone and someone’s grief 

careen around a corner