If it’s spring in the city, have the marchers,
each one with a shrieking whistle, short-circuited the
      streets,
their cause as grave as the dirty cabs growling at their
      feet?
Is Paul Taylor at the City Center? Has my
      architecture-
grad-student-subtenant remembered Sting, a pet
      squirrel
whose appearance each May on the fire escape ledge
is as celebrated as our pink dogwood’s flowering?
      Privileged
as she is, eating Arabian almonds all these years, if
      she’s early
and hears me in the shower, she knows to come right
      in.
Will Joe, my Italian barber still tell me what to do in
      life,
reading my moods in his mirror—his razor like a fruit
      knife
against the peach’s flesh instead of the proud artist’s
      chin?
Will a burglar have borrowed my red Schwinn from
      the rooftop,
the rusty chain foiling a smooth delirious escape?
With pom-poms swinging on their skimmers like
      grapes,
does a Colombian troupe still serenade commuters
      stopped,
even in gray business suits, by a tug on the
      heartstrings,
the subway chasm converted into a dream of
      disembarking?
Does the beggar on my block, who says his name is
      Marx,
still wear a deeper tan than mine? Will souls of three
      sleeping