Rise, meditate, exfoliate

Eat your porridge and drink your pinyon coffee

Click play for Peter, Paul, & Mary

 

Notice how a bird feather never leaves the street corner,

Lodged in dried, pale grass,

Not even lifted by fire-fueled winds.

 

Step onto the bus

Smile at the driver and

Join the company of a

Nurse with heavy eyeliner,

A vagabond grandmother fiddling with a newspaper,

A student staring through tinted windows –

 

Sit by the men with heavy, weathered packs –

Pray the pregnant woman does not go into labor

Along the bumps of Orange Avenue

 

Wonder about the tattoos,

The skin hanging on his body – pulled and

Forced into decisions I’ve never known –

Tear up at the lilt of Paul’s never shine again

 

After three blocks, notice the scent,

Like we’ve worked weeks on a farm –

Earth and salt and cumin –

Imagine we are the only ones alive,

All that’s left of this ragged planet –

A mishmash of beating hearts riding the Mountain Line

 

And feel

The strange turn

A tickle

A rustling

In your ribcage

 

For eight minutes and twenty-two seconds, we are

Enough

We are Beloved,

Held in this diesel-powered palm