Once removed, the policeman’s gray
starched shirt, blue short pants, seem idyllic.
Nostalgia builds, calcified in mounds, in the heart’s cave.
Patent leather belts can keep a queen in place,
we know, despite ourselves (and love it still).
It may be that glinting buckles shine the same
as Taurus in spring – and that misfortune is an
equinox for a people.
The sidewalk is a rough collage of faces,
ambassadors for those too busy crossing
the junction to see its roads turn like the hands
of a clock with the passing day, the fulcrum
of a city that questions itself.