Atop the outdoor staircase at Eastside, a popular shopping center with a Whole Foods west and a State Liquor Store in the middle, a pharmacy and a dinette and the rest
A woman stands, bundled in winter clothes still pressed from camphor-scented storage, her stocking'd legs together as one, a nubby wool skirt, just above the knees, an unlikely guard against the north wind, hands on a wheeled grocery carrier, at attention, scanning the parking lot below
For whom?
Cars pull out , cars pull in, directed by rangy men in jeans and sweatshirts, their reflective vests limning them with presence and authority, gloved hands fingers pointing , then palms up, halting, and finally sweeping in circles, going going Go
A normal US night in a normal US city, Pittsburgh, on a special Wednesday: the day before Thanksgiving. The turkeys are pardoned. Malia and Sasha are not seen
A hatchback closes. A cart is rolled noisily to its pen. Car eyes bounce on a curb, blink once, and move elsewhere.
The air is crisp, and in its crispness displays molecules exhaled by humans; that exhaled air holds the light of headlamps and bends the colored light spirited into the lowering darkness by the bright and willfully chaotic storefront
Whole
Foods
A Korean girl, never more than arm's reach from her adoptive mother, both of them in leggings, spins gayly and throws her soft doll up and up and up, its stuffed-sock legs and stuffed-sock arms stretch outward, floating on the exuberance of childhood
While a man in a black Prius, his forehead a gash of white licked with two age-softened eye brows, brings the tips of his fingers up and wiggles them to indicate "I see you" before slowly pulling away, silently, the bumper-sticker visible only a moment: I ♥️ My Beagle
Even the tall gaunt man atop his bicycle, determined to prevail, his hood, disobeying the pull of his hand, open on the windward side where the cold air tweaks an ear pink
Know so little of how deep this darkness will descend, how marrow-cold this winter, how functionless their muscles, how unmeasured their shopping, how unrecorded their memories, unheard their morrow thanks-to-come
Three Tuesdays past a vicious ignorant child was appointed king.
The meaning of this is known. The world shudders, and goes back to watching colored lights dance on the walls of their caves, while this darkness, gloved in tassels and gold, descends
Caress of the cheek
Grip the neck
These parking lot movements trace moments of life, real alive figures going about the non-business of family and holiday, America-style, last-minute trips for feastly groceries — orange peel, condensed milk — the labor of left-overs to be as left-over as their memories, their love of family, their good schools, ghosts of our soon future, spectral waifs in this fore-dead nation — walking, tossing laughing, teeth showing, grinning, celebrating — actions this evening, evanescent gestures steam-writ on the night air
A last normal breath before
The death rat-
a-tat-
tattle.
