You will amble a transient on
grit-packed freeway shoulders, turn heads
in panopticon windows, the car-borne
surveilling your mendicance.
In the wind of their passing find written
the key to moralities of speed,
in your face flush the heat
of some primal shame
jumbled with an older dignity
you don’t yet understand.
Still your limbs in pace with
no purpose, and shrug
off the suit of excuse for your
being a walker: this is
unlike your to’s of the
routine morning. And you will bear
the hard scorn of concrete
and its swift patrons,
capsulate fleet of militant
goers belying the arbitrary sky.
But heaven stretches in every direction.
Your body will learn its courses
in this dissolute vault, where
vagrants find absolution for
the vagueness of being.
