Hazelfaern Again

You hold your corner with
a boxer’s pride, your hands
on your cart, your avid eyes
tearing up and down the street

These are the green orbs I greet each
morning and afternoon as I
come and go from my brownstone
entertaining all the options of
an enterprising poet’s calendar

I wonder at your sight, what
you surmise while your gaze
follows my predictable gait
traipsing up and down the steps
just by your cart – if you think my
groceries are extravagant or my
heels too dramatic, or if you mistake
the glow across my cheeks for passion or
pedestrian irritation – but, no, it’s just
the unexpected sting of the season’s cold
against which I narrow my own
sensitive, glassy eyes

You mediate the tempo of
my grey streets
with a skylark’s meandering
cry which is larger
when I cannot see you
(How disturbing that a
person can become so
familiar and yet remain
so completely unknown)
Your welcome to ice-cold
drinks, your impromptu odes to
buttered popcorn winding
down through the hallway
wrapping ‘round my
various rooms with the
slanting light – both are
uncontainable in their
fickle entrance and egress
yet neither your voice nor
the sun are indelible
(Night washes you both
away without apology as
the rising stars wink sympathy
toward my half-empty freedoms)

Because tomorrow is Saturday
I’ll stop by your cart and purchase
a small diet soda I may or may not
drink – the dollar I’ll hand you
just a token of something like
appreciation for the oddly
familiar place you hold in
my small world and you’ll
smile the same smile you
beam at every solitary lady
who stands in your line and

because we are both clever urbanites
we’ll pretend we’ve never met