Out through the frosty archipelago
card-players, morning beer-drinkers,
parsimonious housewives
and Nick Carter readers:

the derelict bum
seems to have a universe
of oddities folded, wrapped, stashed
in his filthy bag:
his tireless attention
to a thousand scraps of paper.

Someone hums a love song
while the others sleep.
No matter how far he might travel
his secret story is written somewhere,
in the generous air, in the distance.

A little patch of sky between suburbs,
about the size of a football field,
or maybe it’s a dusty parkinglot,
sees him waving, and is reminded of;—
and in the distance the distance…