SOME DREAMILY SMOKE CIGARETTES, SOME TRACK

SOME DREAMILY SMOKE CIGARETTES, SOME TRACK

SOME DREAMILY SMOKE CIGARETTES, SOME TRACK

Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track
toddlers who walk like drunks. Buzzy,
the picnic grounds, noisy, sun-crazed, how
forks and spoons don’t exactly lie flat.

A mountain’s here, a famous overlook
from which you’d see none of this. Like that
first daguerreotype, its moving carriages
and those who strolled never picked up

in the long exposure, a Paris street emptied
by the camera, only houses and lamp posts
gone eternal. Or the one who stopped
for a shoe shine, the one who knelt to the task.

At the picnic—a commotion. A large man
to a younger man. I don’t know you! he’s hugging
and laughing. I don’t know who you are,
he shouts over and over a stillness so immense.