Let’s make this one about a lion. And
it might just as well be flanking the Art
Museum steps, paw holding the world down,
falling asleep on peace treaties, bells, wrecked
cars. What love I have goes to such quiet.
He lies more still than any of us can
imagine being. Like the last voice saying
one last thing, frozen so we can see it:
glory of fur and blind absolute eyes,
dreaming us while grit goes on falling through air.
So suppose one day the stone lion lifts
a paw, the sky films gray, the stores close down.
The last heel’s cobbled. The wind stops. At two
o’clock by the Museum fountain a
sandwich sticks in my throat. The lion turns his
head, casually shaking off sunlight,
clearing his mind of the idea of us.
He gets up, kneads the marble and slowly
strolls off like someone we might have loved, now
on his way to becoming something else.