intersection on bush street (a poem for jon)

2031 bush street, san francisco, april 29, 1942. image by dorothea lange.


In the thick of my own sometimes deafening thirst
to lay at rest in punctuation; kneel between words
and seek out a little quiet time between those stops,
I would quite like to step on and off the bus.

And say hello. Exchange best wishes.
Shoot the shit as the gears change lanes.

And sit back down. Listen to the distances running.
One end of a yellow painted bridge and the other.
Eavesdrop, maybe, on a conversation,
just to make some sense of those intersecting lines.

Degrees which separate; define.
Gridlocked traffic. Ukuleles balanced late at night.

photograph courtesy of the bancroft library, berkeley, california.