An Algebra
Everything you need know, you merely need remember.
Rodolfo Cortizar (1910 -2005)
I open a window in mid spring
and the morning hands me something:
men and women rushing for themselves so
they move horizontally. One cabbie
flips off another. Someone screams No! Crowds wait
at corners for green — somehow it always comes.
And red.
In this picture, a man is blurred –
turning away from her
it becomes difficult to tell who
fouled whom while a street vender
stares down into a stainless steel cart,
the red and black umbrella faded by endless months
in sun missing something. An unseen baby is caught
in mid wail around the corner
where every corner
is the future.
I stand here frozen too — in the picture
just before turning back
toward a room
where somewhere in the drawers
of a desk there is an x between yellowing envelopes
and a y between letters
on a dog-eared page of a book I haven’t read in years
and as I turn amidst a city’s groan
I listen
for the equal sign.
