The white sea appears through gray shapes
As the homeless come first to the streets
Bearing well-stocked carts and a wave
And a name to one another like businessmen
At elevators.
One would think that they’d be free
Of obligation’s evening animosities
But they barely can look upon the world
As it is opened, or the sun as it peeks
Through a wool lapel.
Out of the smoke of hidden motors
The workers come out holding thermos’s
From the secret treatment plant, dazed
From the all-night lightbulbs nestled in the
Rebar and 2 by 4 frames.
Temporaries, pulled from lines, are gathered
Into circles like bonfires for assignment,
They shake their feet and tilt their heads
As if listening to anything in the foreman’s instruction
But the ring of lucre.
The headlights slowly stutter down the hill,
The colors they have can't compete with the gray
Of highway and sky; meanwhile, the lateness
Of the train and the pallor of the hour
Knits furrows onto platform faces.
A curtain of light falls through the clouds,
And a bluetoothed salesman begs a client
To not hang up by holding himself hostage
Pleading all the things he will do and say
To make the day not wasted.
The sky is as metallic as the containers
Where more, in hordes, submit
To the molds that require the mind
To be wound and unwound like clocks to chase
The moments at a distance.
Though the data to extract and condense
Will never relent, they are so slow to act,
Will never relent, they are so slow to act,
Resistant at every step, as they tighten
Their straps, fasten bags, and fidget
Gnashing until dark,
Lost inside and fumbling for each other’s arms,
Which become, as easily as the sun is released,
Something real, not just to be desired, but
As needed as the tracks that bolt
Uncooperative wires for spark.
