Dim Night

I was walking under the bridge of Santo Café where friends and acquaintances always seem to cross paths. A man in rags stands a little way off with his zither or whatever it is and his can of coins on the ground. Boys and girls a stone’s throw away invent themselves in loving play and companionship. They hold hands and whisper low and the legs of their jeans inadvertently brush against each other like two people sleeping in the same bed. We stare at each other and if her eyes were not so strong I would likely get lost in the weird adornments of nose ring and rust red leather jacket. The scene itself is inadvertent, untested, difficult to place in my mind. On top of the little stone bridge are café tables and bright orange lights and always a sense of lonely transit and of being suspended willingly in isolation like a pigeon perched on a gargoyle. You can see the whole world from up here. You can see a rip in a pair of jeans from a hundred feet and you can perceive the outline of a hand in a pocket, a little unintentional gnarled knuckle. Just the breeze, the lightest suggestion of wind up there, could tear a frozen skullcap off a snowman. The bridge’s stone arc insinuates permanence and leaping lightness in the world. It reflects in a cornea’s gray striations like some kind of first motherly caress crossing one’s consciousness. Not a hair’s breadth separates your atomized stare from its cold rock body. All the summer fairs have danced its span in plain steps and it remains outstretched. Winter passes like a dream in which you must carry rocks up a hill.

Even if you have no faith in anything you can still be persuaded by the motion of passing days and the unexpected moment that comes at you gambling. Once again you have that executive look in your eyes that undoes all your usual simple expressions and makes you seem incredible, as if you might become a bird. Your metamorphic rise into the trees is a regular vision at breakfast, church bell sound and coffee tongue. I think while wandering in a certain garden I saw you joined up there by a whole flock of the spiritually reversed.