The Sun Hits Brutally Just Now

When I want rubber bands,
East Tenth Street’s sidewalk understands:
a grand array of them (discarded rhythmically –

dropped, equidistant, each from each – released

from bundles of delivered mail – by postal people,
who have long before repaired to
their respective vales of rest or tears or loneliness)
grace coastal regions of the concrete pathway

in a punctuated swath, as if whatever
enterprise devolved into supplying them
had known I’d want just this replenishment, just now –
a moment, somehow, which decided otherwise

I ought to ache from lack: the absence of what
I believe I left my mother’s womb so many years ago
to find: the barest hint of a transcendent love –
the kind whose lasting passion would engulf

the body and acquaint the soul with lunacy
and make you feel as if you weren’t
absolutely real, or maybe that you were. What have
I incurred instead? A blinding light so deadly brilliant

I must guard my sight from it – the sun hits brutally
just now, four-forty-five – last dying burst
before its dive into the dusk. I’ve got
my own profoundly unappreciated musk.

I’ve got the terrible dark prettiness of all this
glorious elastic and ecstatic city’s mess –
the dress, of course, its roiling blood demands.

I’ve got my rubber bands.

.