Ode

Sophocles, tenor sax reeds, snap beans on a kitchen

table

O summer sunlight

clinging not so much to people as to their Subaru

Foresters

from a fragile enough sense that things

pile up, regardless of time or the space

that inevitably closes around it.

Saussure phoned about the gliss (not the glass).

The side street with the ATM window

has a little patch of reckless crabgrass; bristles

plus a few bony shadows, one of which

looks like a bent thumb.

Please pay attention.

It doesn’t have to be a 1940s movie lobby in maroon and

gold

filled with standing metal ashtrays, or

the chorus line decked out in flame-colored taffeta;

the sun backs into a Starbucks window,

collar (seersucker?), loose braids (the Avenue at

Middelharnis

shoveling its way past painterly lights,

appealingly awkward uprights)

Thus: Upper and lower extenders

slash away at what can be written

before the city on file, quietly flaming gingko trees

but also vegan restaurants with a surprising number

of regulars at the outdoor metal tables, sets

down its non-negotiable terms for the ode to us,

formal and musically complicated.