From “In the Ocean of Vons, the Body is the Rowboat of Intention”

94.

The only one having a good time

is the little girl in her blue poncho

singing a marching yellow rainboot song 

in the checkout line behind me. She holds 

her mother’s hand, umbrella dripping.

The rest of us in this half-empty Vons

must really need something: after all,

it’s been a year of rain in one long storm

(it’s dark outside and not even two yet),

the parking lot puddles turned to ponds 

the girl can’t wait to splash through again. 

Not me. I took the long way around

but even then my New Balance got wet

in the crossing rain and small-cart fetching

and old umbrella. I’m on my way out

and I can feel their cold enclosure.

95.

The rainbow to the north is so intense 

I stop my cart and watch the arc blaze

an impossible blue, or a blue 

possible only now. The source of light 

builds from inside until the rainbow 

is so bright people park where they are. 

They get out of their cars. They stand by

their doors and testify with their phones, 

and when a new rainbow begins to form 

above the first, it is so beautiful

it almost hurts, like a remembered 

promise of sorts, a communication 

from the rainbows to the parking lot 

congregation: “It will end in beauty 

as it began.” “Despite the suffering?”

I say, and the rainbows say yes, and fade.

96.

A large-cart thief is crossing the street 

to the Ben Franklin strip mall sidewalk

but not to get Legos for his niece

or a much-delayed condolences card, 

or at least I don’t think so: the cart

overflows with duct-taped clothes, water jugs 

on the bottom shelf tied down with string,

ropey hair leaking from his bandana

as he leans to push the heavy thing.

There is no money in the image

and my prediction proves correct: he rolls 

the cart past the store, but in the limit 

of my vision he vanishes. Where

did he go? I unload my groceries 

and follow his trail to the laundromat 

where he reads a book and washes his clothes.

97.

Did he see me first then lock his eyes 

on the jam? Did he pull it from the shelf 

to label-study as I retreat

or cart by, or is this crossroads all mine?

Whatever it is, the odds of dodging 

Earl (let’s call him Earl) are slim: it’s early

on my list, and the sight lines in new Vons 

are wide as a ship’s. So, I approach

my decades-old grudgy memory of him

just as he carts away. I call his name 

and he says mine. At the Hostess endcap 

we catch up on the cost of living

and our adult kids, and when he talks 

I am thinking about his eyebrows

turned so deeply grey and his mottled skin 

and how much I want a frosted pastry.

98.

The parking lot coyote, mangy

and pack-abandoned, moves between cars

then is still, not even glancing around,

as if it has forgotten where it is

or what life is for. A crow caws at it.

Somebody says whoa, and a mother lifts

her son from the shopping cart and puts him 

back in the car. The coyote tries 

to lie down, but the agony of it 

is unbearable: chunks of crusted skin 

break apart, swollen joints don’t bend.

It wobbles like a marionet 

attic-bound for years, strings tangled, wood 

hollowing, dusty and infected.

“Call Animal Control,” I tell my phone

just as the coyote collapses.