Sight

Down between the crevices of my island suburb life I can see
           a street lined with laundry and sunburned children
           and children whose skin never burns. They are
    all alike shaded by the Spanish moss,
that magi’s sacrifice.

Thin bike tires
    flicker through
                    the broken light—golden white and cool blue in a
               tangled rush
                              that makes you blink. The oak branches are
so old, thick as a man’s waist,
                                                thicker,
and the path beneath them is as variegated as the faces who watch the old whistling man on his rusty bicycle

He is headed toward the church we call white, but that is now a dusty yellow for so many years so close to the salt of the ocean. Against the warm wall
                                                  is the deep blue of the bottles turned heads over onto the branches of
                    the fingering trees that are
           smaller than the oaks. There is faith here
adorned with superstition, like the man in
          trim black suit will wear
   a yarn hat of yellow.

But this is only down between the spaces of my life, the things I can
catch only
in
a glimpse, like
looking
fast through a
key hole—and the door is shut, and I am looking at a street where all the houses
are made of brick
and all the shopping centers
are filled with tourists
and all the bottles
are only filled
with medicine and Cola.
Not faith.