One sunny afternoon on Morningside Heights
From the window-seat of the Crosstown bus,
I gaze up momentarily between chuckles
Amid Jean Paul’s tendril-flower of allusions

Many resemble Henry Sutton
in sleevelinks in Ballarat
who invented television;

Waiting on the stairs of The Mizpah Missionary Home on
Summit Avenue, the children of apostles played with
neighborhood kids and sometimes spread the gospel, warming

We all have seen it.
In the slide show he gives each summer.
There he is! (or There you are!) someone will say

I rented an atelier attached to the flat
of a fading French film star, Marie-Claire—
who sighed, shaking out her trademark titian hair,

The sky is desert blue,
Like the pool. Secluded.
No swimmers here. No smog—

He rode “no hands,” speeding
headlong down the hill near
our house, his arms extended,

My mother was born in a country
whose name I can’t pronounce.

The people with minds
        will speak their minds,

flying into the air
exhilarated and
scared shitless