It occurs to me as I watch the January rain come down
in hard, grey Saturday afternoon sheets,
That I have loved these streets with
their damp laughter and dusty sighs,
I have savored moments spent under
this skeletal canopy, with its thin silvery specters
so many ghosts crowded into an empty doorway,
peering down in silence at laughing couples running
hand-in-hand down January's crooked sidewalk,
the call of calliope in pursuit of them
as they rush towards dry rooms and warm kisses.