Eurydice in the City

Above a green square slab of grass stands 
a gridded modern monolith, housing laws, 
the spectrum of data, designed to free the innocent, 
or to capture those who gird themselves against any rule,
those who breach the order of design.

Pigeons walk the gray path that lines the living center place
where plantings mark this ancient land. People also walk 
and linger here, criss-crossing the space between the blocks of buildings. 
I wonder if the ghosts of animals or Indians float anywhere nearby,
or if the land has forgotten them as well. I wonder about this forgetting,

or if beneath the built, brittle world, something abides from the past?
Eurydice wandering in some dark place, stung and spilling?
Ancient stones lay buried beneath the surface, still, in darkness. The wind
enters here as always. The sounds have changed. A bus passes with the rush
of engines, then there is the squeal of metal brakes. Someone laughs.

Perhaps the sea is red? Tired. The metal benches here are bubblegum pink. The blue sky overhead is empty. I easily forget about this opening (the sky) into the infinite that is always encircling the weight of things. The red pulse of metro buses streaming to and fro, a helicopter engine sounds with sputterings of whir. Flags wave on poles, the world represented in the warp

and woof of threads. A delicate gray shadow patterns the grass beneath 
a small, straight tree, empty of leaves. Buds line the branches like dark beads. The day seems full here, but it is also empty. This inner city park 
is a grassy green square slab where coyote once roamed, rattlesnake slithered, horses ran, cow grazed. Now automobiles stream by to the north,

sirens sound, clouds form and drift. 
This region of waiting — of nearness, of distance.

I’m listening for Orpheus here, and wonder when I see someone lift 
their arm in a wave to a stranger, if Orpheus is listening now to this tired red sea of sound and change? Like an ambient scent, this square is filled with movement, with my meditation.

“Voices undying and tender” he whispered to me, are here.

The late hour might be an eternal noon.

The sweetness of the willow branch is remembered.

Each small black window is a pool of shimmering onyx,

exploding this quarrel of gray tangle.