THEY PUT IT ALL IN TRASH BAGS

Clouds roll in. Sun is down. The light turns. Someone in a Chevrolet minivan runs it.

I sit at a public chess table at which no one ever sits, between Yankee Stadium and Exit 6, listen to the traffic, look at the trees and the mansard roofs and the gabled windows and the stone walls and brick walls and the waving grass. I feel the wind.

People burn their fuel. People run the red light driving cars and trucks and buses. People run across the four lanes to get home, to get to the subway. People get angry when someone in front of them is too slow. People are in a hurry.

I used to be in a hurry. I might still be in a hurry if I could.

I long for a cigarette. To put something heavy into my lungs. Smoke. Or water. Or desert sand.

Something tells me it’s about to storm. Tree leaves show me their silver backs in the quickening air. 

Something tells me the rain will be acid, rain that sugars the gravestones so the names dissolve, water that keeps coming and coming, that fills up this living, hurrying place like a lung, till we all go still and empty out.

I wonder: who will buy up all this prime real estate in our new ghost town?

At the sound of the ice cream truck, I rise, pick up my bags, head home, dry as a bone.