“all the tired horses in the sun how’m i s’posed to get any riding done?”

by Wade Linebaugh

Being a strange boybird, Icarus is too busy
to take Mom & Dad’s calls
& a little girl eats wagon wheels
covered in tomato sauce & all
earth’s grandeur, i can see from here:
fifth pylon on the second bridge.

This is where i see this Sibyl city, waiting
sandgrain years, here where airplanes
land & climb, she keeps getting older
never younger & i’m underwhelmed,
a boy seeing the Rockettes from too far away.
Oed und leer, das bay.

Out here is where i sing
next to cars & mud; i sing to my caged
city’s candles as the biggest one falters
seizes & trembles crepusculent smoke
into fusky purple air.
How many more little girls & boybirds
are in their cars tonight?  Driving behind me,
fifth pylon on the second bridge?

& Now two hundred thirty thousand new candles cluster,
bright fireflies double by the bay almost brighter than the sun
&, rere regardant, half million more over my left shoulder:
diseased fireflies forming nightroads in lines of green & blue
for people to drive safely out of the sky.