The good life is unbuttoned, questions
about gender just stirring after a raucous night
under the hammock. Rumor has it that trellises

So many channels to choose from. Somewhere
in the high numbers blockheads trash-talk
during recess in the blue playground near school.

Oh to be telephoned late at night by a stranger whose voice
projects nothing but bright concern, nothing intimate
between you except a common regard for the hour

Today it’s the blimp over Manhattan,
in search of some unnamed event. Drowsy,
gaudy, lazy, almost sexual, its beauty

Someone slips by you in the corridor of a crowded train, a
stranger making his way
   to the bar,

It was as though the very day itself was wearing a see-through
   blouse weeks before
a mastectomy,

What else is there to do but watch carefully for any noticeable
   movement by a statue
of a past hero,

Although it is noon or roughly so, the church below is
   positioned like an hour hand 
at eleven o’clock, 

Baseball is the purest sport, meaning
ballparks out in the heartland, mixing
fork balls and slurves, tapping