Creatures Through This Darkness

Christmas has come to Philadelphia
once and for all, gracing each good night

over and over and over again through the
noise of atonals, horns, and a mistake series.

I

Walking down a labyrinthine stepset
just to the West of City Hall I noticed

some scurrying beast beneath a bleacher,
but I could not see its dark form despite

lights hanging like illumined fauna or robust
and steady icicles, so I continued away,

the broken image untouched and the feeling of
open wounds burning deep into my brow.

But then I passed the fever of some damning
omen--a deadened bird, blinding, sitting still,

its neck entirely ruffled and encased
in several inches of a feathery brown torso.

I could not help the arousal toward that
tangible image, my feet aching to spring.

II

I strangely saw no homeless men in the
vicinity of this orange and black Hades.

The last memory was of a sprawling form so
still, like the wormed Death, back on Chestnut St.

His rags were multicolored, his body I hope
invisible beneath their thrifty warmth, were

reinforcing the difficulty of my new urban
grit, paradoxes sitting amidst my shy perch.

On the subway I saw students from Temple donning
dreadlocks and woven tops, chatting with

smiles as large as the sun even though my eyes
were twenty feet away and my back was turned.

How I wish I could be them, or with them, unfathoming
with such grace, and that dead bird's image erased.