I am sitting in the yard watching an early evening
 
blanket my lap and my ankles, watching 
sparrow flit by, though thinking of the portly 

Edwardian pigeons I know the city is poisoning 
where they roost atop the grain silos above Divisadero.

Below them is the wide canal that twists through town. 
Below, the ex-cons rubbing cars and trucks at the car wash,
toss the dead ones into a can. 

At dusk the red light pours easily over the fences,
roof rats scoot in fits and starts, beads 
crossing the telephone lines, racking time.

My black-hooded terrier whines and trembles,

and I am sitting here swallowing back a few small barks
and what feels like the hollow bones of wrens,
a wasp nest of paper.

I hear doves.
I think I could coo.
I think I could’ve been poisoned.

I think I have lived here too long,
listing my sorrows
for anyone to see

and fault me should they care. 

How often have I broken 
bread with the quick, small birds
dropping near? There, that one is Joy,
there, his twin, Terror.

I close my eyes and recall the old fools,
who drank a little too much wine
standing near the temple gates,
mendicant, holy,
and think, I may have got it wrong.
Maybe it’s time I bury a plaster Francis 
of Assisi--the way the realtor said,
or was it St. Joseph?—sell the property, 

move to the desert and give myself up
 
to all that burning overhead, 
electric, that city, asylum of fat 
chance with its shrieking  
and the everywhere dying
odor of cigarette smoke, disinfectant, urine. 

I could live on discounted dinner rolls, pads of butter, 
fried eggs and onions.

I could think of myself as an unemployed Hollywood
extra, keep it a secret,

wear sunglasses,
ride the smooth elevators,
letting my mind, 

as if out of ancient, dead seas,
glide the hotel corridors, contained,

like a dark manta ray.