vagabond

I wander like a moth toward an unseen lamp,

moving along the twisting sidewalk called my life,

on the periphery, up overpasses, through bright tunnels,

restless mind driving, watching the sky shift

imperceptible toward another dawn, and another

bursting like a ripe fruit through the clouds,

spilling onto a shack on the edge of town.

I rest there: cot, table, chair, boiling cauldron

over a dying fire. It's no use. The itch abides here, too.

I move on, ascending curving interchanges surrounded by sky

shining off the pavement with utopian brilliance,

bouncing off the skyscrapers sparkling, rising

like the bottom half of a monstrous jaw.

I shelter in the steel shade, but in the unforgiving beams

of harsh noon light, the deep lines of the city

reveal themselves carved into these faces,

these dead-set eyes plowing lives by force.

I don't have it in me. I am not of the city,

only a pilgrim passing through.

I wander far now, into the woods, over a border.

My home eludes me, the ghost of it just ahead,

always ahead through the trees.

I am a blur in the periphery

of the conversation, the static between two stations.

I stumble on, thinking: this could be my home,

or this, or this . . .