IN OUR CURRENT SITUATION

we have been thwarted by

the needs of the city:

can’t cross a street here,

can’t breathe the clean air there -

we covet a neighborhood

where cops don’t move us on

and we talk in terms of hen-house

milk-shed, stallion

but then the bus comes

or the street-cleaner rumbles by -

where is the shed snake skin on the backroad

or the tramp through green New England woods?

our breasts ache

for a more rarified place –

meanwhile,

we walk single file

down crowded sidewalks

and trust the towers don’t fall.