When you leave the museum
of contemporary art, opening
the doors to midday, you may need
a few minutes to reset context:
the bike shackled to the sign
is only a bike, the sign only a sign,
no small white exhibit labels.
Out here birds are nothing
but their crumb-begging selves,
shitting on cars and waking us
before our alarms. Cars are cars,
shit is shit. You walk by some café
where a woman sits alone unless
you count the two dachshunds
eating torn bits of French bread
she’s tossed under the table.
Aren’t the dogs perfectly
curated and aren’t the branches
like bicycle spokes, the noontime light
a playing card whirring between them?
As if sunlight as sunlight isn’t
art enough, as if trees need to be
more than themselves to deserve
attention, which is a kind of love.
You’re a stranger in this city,
finding your way to the hotel
where you’ll sleep only tonight,
though when you arrive,
you’ll text your husband,
I’m home. It’s more than enough:
the city as itself and you as you
inside it, and home as home,
etcetera, forever.