Babylon

 

Yesterday I quickly carried inflated hope over average tires on a shifting freeway

Past dented orange cone sentinels and sagging houses.

The crackling radio played in time with the bumps in the grooved lanes,

The sweet air and peach tea only past the hills of crumbling complexes

Of the tired metropolis,

Past the disturbed man who has given his life to the futile misheard direction of Passing traffic,

Who enthusiastically, continually screams “go!” for hours as errant eyes widen (most ignore)

And middle-aged Arab refugees sprint across the four lanes separating the Wallgreens from the homeless newspaper salesmen

From the taco trucks with fluorescent lighting

From the Halal Bakery from the Ethiopian Grocery.

 

I carelessly careened toward the office building off the wide and unlined road Behind the comforting, mysterious family restaurant, to the porch steps where the lighting would flash hours later

Across the bleak urban sky

(As my hopping, flittering focus pinballed happily between a glass of water,

A collarbone and accompanying collar,

And the tempestuous patches of exposed atmosphere).

 

And I, a momentary battlement, questioned yet again,

How have you so impeccably cast this improbable epic?

How miraculous, that you carefully hid the expanding starlight of the universe

Within us all,

Among our tired knees,

In the left hand corner of our crooked, halfhearted smiles.

I found in silvery air such as this

Your unmistakable thundering calm.