Crablike On His Ass

Today my legs feel tugged and sore and heavy,
slow and interesting: they pull as if they tow
a weight behind, as if they hauled some strange
invisible but necessary heavy wagon, commandeered
to stow, convey a load of what my soul would need

to use to furnish it from hereon in. I am the product
of a cold December city wind – suffusing me,
suggesting just what psychic land I’ll have to plow –
a tolerably pleasurable tiredness, fatigue – in league
with an intriguing army of illuminations which

insist on altering my weave and countenance
and station, so to teach them how to promulgate
the space-time spirit of me for whatever must come
next. Down into the bowels of Manhattan: through
a midday crowd I lug my mass across the subway

platform, glad that once I’m on the train I might
sit down to contemplate this odd sensation with its
powerful implicit callings to a task. A homeless
schizophrenic man moves crablike on his ass in front
of me: blocks, then scuttles farther – lets me pass.



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