What Friends You Have

Swimming in the thick Manhattan chowder
of an early August Union Square –
with its smug muggy lunchtime air
of knowing – but not saying anything –

you wondered what you’d have to bring

to anyone to say today. Every time
you talked it came out mystic squawk:
ephemeral and rude: vague and impolite.

You tried, for instance, to explain why “Art”
is such a fright; why friendship as abstraction
has no meaning: themes all billowing
and leaning toward each other like entangling

webs of dangling spiders: nothing
with articulable specificity. But you would
justify existence in a chat. What friends
you have, to stick around for that.

.