The ground is slowly building
upward with white additions
that create flickers of light
that you can only see at
certain angle as you bounce
up and down on your heels,
like the sky grounded up
a mirror and sprinkled the
millions of shards,
leaving the dust and remains
carelessly on the ground
for workers in camouflage
pants and shirts with
bright orange vests and
wooden brooms to sweep
and crack with shovels.
They pile the layers of
cake to the side of the
walkway so people don’t
trip into them or pound them
carelessly back into the
cracks and grout-less ruts
of the tiles that are even slick
during the summertime,
each piece shows its age
with strips of purest white
separated by dirt and grime
made compact by hundred
of boots marching
asynchronously to cadences
unknown.
Those who walk these streets
are varied and similar:
Women in boots heeled
so high that they must shuffle
over patches of melted snow
that have refrozen into long
gnarled tracts of ice;
men in boots that hug to
the knees, coats opened
to reveal cheekily their
t-shirts and light sweaters,
as if to boast their
dominance over the cold;
children bundled so tightly
that they waddle precariously,
or held closely
in a silk cocoon,
perhaps a coated prison so tight
that limbs left to dangle
instead levitate.
Policemen in long leather coats,
fastened at the waist with
a flimsy belt,
a Russian box fur hat upon
their heads neatly,
boots polished to a blinding
sheen that intensifies the echoes
of each step, punctuated by
darting eyes and beardless faces
whipped by the sting of
minute frozen shards floating
on dry gusts
that seem to shoot straight up
towards the sky.
Old men stay hunched in their
claimed spots on heavily
shellacked wooden benches
with rusted legs and protruding
bolts to hold them to the seats,
some with canes held between
the knees with gloved hands,
congregating and laughing–
in spite of the cold that
brings out the colors
of the countryside
in their cheeks and noses–
for hours, or so it should
so rightly seem to those
who only pass them only
to see in their eyes
no intent of moving.
Old women shuffle along
the road in more
sensibly built shoes
with smoothened soles
and smart hats or scarves
wrapping their neatly trimmed
and somewhat curly hair,
purses around the elbows of
their bent arms,
sometimes adjusting the
thin belts of polished metal
and turquoise stones
that hold firmly their
loose traditional clothes
tightly to the waist to give
them a feminine shape
on the horizon in a sea
of patterned cloth.
The ground is slowly building
upward with white additions
that sometimes never quite
land in expected locations
to join others of their kind:
sometimes to evaporate
instantly above a steaming
opening in the ground,
sometimes to clump on the
stilled breathes lingering
on the pointed awnings
above dark chocolate eyes,
sometimes into the mouths
of children laughing
as they slide on pieces of
broken wood or cardboard
down impromptu slopes,
slanted in such a way
you can’t help but wonder
what their foundations
once appeared to be.
Composed 12/10/13
Author’s Note: Just trying new things, like describing what I see when I have to walk across town to get to my favorite vegetable shop. Lots of interesting folk to see out here.
It should also be noted that this poem appears in the December 2013 issue of the PC Mongolia internal publication, The PC Mongol Post. Cheers!
Two Second Street 