JAMES SALLIS

 

City at the Country's Still Heart

A city apart, we awaken, you
in your platform bed low as Japanese tables,
there where land has its first thought
of water, I at this high jagged edge.

Hawk-high I peer out over
the city's plain and the chain of
its people rising, their hearts like doors,
doing business, doing business.

This evening I will send for you.
They will come along the street in bright
yellow wagons, in their blue suits, carrying
the warm small birds of my love.