A Delicate Place

Internet News Bulletin at 11
AM, while most people are employed,
I’ve added a new feature to the time
as I’m un. I’ve become
the guy in the grey hoody,
with his matching sweatpants,
who would always walk purposely,
simultaneous with my routine
of driving to a 9 to 5 desk job.

Some people pull up to the channel, park,
read stories with great interest,
or judging by a dank dirty smell,
“chill out” unknowing that their illegal activity
has penetrated the outside world from their car.
The local college crew team practices.
Boats begin journeys of afternoon recreation.
Squirrels and young crows don’t mind each other.
Mothers jog with their children in three-wheeled carriages.

I walk past the place I once panicked,
and floated a rent-a-car while delivering pizza.
The same place where we used to buy seedy schwag
from a guy named Tomas, who as is turned out
was really simply named Thomas, adding
shame to his shady drug dealing persona.
I shyly snub the guy walking his dog,
the elderly couple battling their retirement,
and slow down so I’m keeping a good distance
from the mailman who pretends to deliver mail
to a house, so I pass him, and his space is returned.

At the docks, where I see the daily grey heron,
which in my optimism I once mistook for blue,
where the cab drivers park alongside,
and a black and white striped butterfly fish
meditates near the underwater rocks,
a fin stabs the surface and a wayward dolphin
uses his time to swim between the sailboats.
This tiny button of water becomes his place
to break away from the channel, the bay, the gulf,
the ocean of life that has past before him,
and awaits his return.