I don’t go around with the belief in correspondences circling in my head as I turn

any corner in Paris, or San Francisco, or Portland , & I doubt Baudelaire carried

on that way, although the method for poets who walk, the Whitmans, the Olsons,

well, we’re out there for a reason, & it’s not the shortest distance between two

points, but labyrinthine meandering, looking up down & around for nothing in

particular. Today out of peripheral vision I saw a tree stroll down the street. New

spring shadows of limbs across asphalt. At the far end of Pleasant, (sure, I could

long for Boulevard Saint-Germain or Telegraph Hill, but don’t), I saw a mirage

of a man smoking, but no cigarette smell, & just after I greeted one of his cats,

“Hello, Gato!” the train running parallel to Forest Avenue pulled a black tank car

reading GATX before the blue Boston & Maine boxcar. I saw a goddess cleaning

out the last empty bottles under the seat of her car dressed in the tightest of blue

jeans outside the Redemption Center. After the clerk at the wine store loaded up

my linen tote bag from Polaine on rue du Cerche-Midi, the streets on the way

home lost all familiarity presenting strangers at every corner who wanted to talk,

carry on, be surprised, until at the crossroads of home & imagination the last of a

snow bank pulled back to reveal the coldest of rhinestone hearts long off its

invisible gold chain sparkling in the sun like real tears of love abandoned in

anguish.

@ Robert Gibbons, 2007

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