Survival

Hailing a Cab

The Mumbler Speaks of
Pigeon Wars

Squeeze Play: For Joe and
Norma Jean

A Local Virgo Makes the Paper

Safe from the Elements

St. Valentine's Day: When you Care Enough to Send the Very Best

Completely Well: For B.B. King and Wallace Stevens

April Dancing: For Dietrich
Bonhoeffer

The Left Hand of God

Passing Thru for Ti Jean

The Rosary of Dachau

Hailing a Cab
The City dreams me up
nothing fancy just a kid
out late on the East Side curb
by our old broken home

Down Summer's Second Avenue
headlights slide at me in a herd
and my brightened heart
beats with the great
need of a cab

Riding the head of that need
I feel you Father hacking
through the moonlight blocks between us
the roof-lit Checker cruise
of yourself seeming to wheel
its black and yellow way
toward my child's hailing eyes

But no you avoid me
as if I were an accident
or because you could tell
just by my looks that you
wouldn't dare take a fare to
where I would want you to go

Having passed me up you stop
half-a-block away and I watch you
inside the taxi's lit interior
as you scratch down
something in your log that
leads me on into believing
that you may have seen me
reflected in your mirror's rear-view
I wave again and wait

Years and years for you to back up
growing as I wait into a man
rooted in the child's night
of that endless corner
still able to feel in my sleep
the blood red points

Of your fading tail-lights
as you drive them deeper
and deeper into my heart