The streets are the theme
of this morning's mural of fog.
Torn dollar-a-hope scratch tickets
litter a Seattle bus stop
where day laborers,
part-time sailors and I
sit on toppled shopping carts.
We wait amongst pigeons who binge on crumbs.
Streetfolk are hungry, but not enough
to seize the feathered lunches.
A sixteen-year-old school girl
wears a rouge mask and walks past
my much obliged middle-aged eyes
as soaked gray air melts her mascara.
Blue trickles thick
down the taboo image
while the sun peeps
through the broken pane of a cloud
as Big Band music blasts
from a passing Camaro.
It was the groove
that spiked the punch of music
long before grunge wrenched from a local's
dope-sick gut hardened
the emerald city rain.
