I see a bruised sky
above empty streets at dawn.
I don’t ask if the sky fought back.

Is that Ruth Stone’s “still white
stilted heron” I see, no longer still—
now swooping across

the small park lake? I don’t ask
for permission before bending
my own knees

in the opposite direction
as a gesture of solidarity.
No train in sight to ride.

I see a photograph of ice disks
in the midst of slamming
against their doppelgängers.

I don’t ask why now.
Is that a sliver of the moon
I see before another dawn?

Everyone’s talking about
its upcoming x-country
dance tour with the sun.

I don’t ask why it won’t
be coming to our town.
I see a man argue

with a utility pole.
Not the one an SUV
smashed into yesterday.

I don’t ask if
the pole is okay.
Is that the East Coast

I see pretending to be
the West Coast?
Nothing shaking here

in the middle. I don’t ask.

I see you, boy, taking
the titular role in my dream
two nights in a row.

I see you, city, aftershocks
and all, demand to be
more than mere location.

Windowless bars beneath
elevated subway tracks bleed
into a woman you both know

who shames all of us
in a haughty voice
for looking for a place

to drink in the middle
of the afternoon bleeds
into a serpentine footrace course

in a vacant lot (distance unknown)
bleeds into people I know
from the Midwest

laughing with people I knew
from the East Coast
when I forget Willa Cather

had a New York City life.
And I don’t ask if it’s my turn
to remind them

how her forgotten black plough
was once “heroic in size,
a picture writing on the sun.”

Everyone who has left
the Central Time Zone sees
why I no longer ask if they remember

what it’s like to live more

than 25 miles from an ocean.
I took myself out of the running
so many high tides ago.

Note: The poem includes quotes from Ruth Stone’s poem “Train Ride” and Willa Cather’s novel My Ántonia.