Kevin Pilkington

Only trains rattle me these days

and I know better to think the sound

of rain falling is the woman in the next

apartment crying over her dog. It ran

uptown the way I did once and just

ended up chasing my own trail around.

The building in the middle of the block

that burned down is being rebuilt

and is now just steel beams although

it became a full-length mirror when

a junkie stood in front of it and kept

staring at himself. He has nothing to do

with the guy who brought another dog

on the elevator. I looked down at it

and thought it was the size of a pig

a farmer would slaughter for bacon.

I know I shouldn’t think that way

and even went back to church then

stopped going again when the priest

kept doing stand-up from the pulpit,

and I was always the joke getting

the biggest laugh. And if I look thinner

it’s not because I lost weight the city

has on COVID, losing 36,000 New Yorkers,

restaurants closed and stores empty.

With the vaccines it is slowly gaining

weight, even traffic got heavier over

the past month. It has a long way to go

before it sounds like Gershwin again or

we don’t have to stay so far apart

most of Delaware could fit in between

me and anyone walking nearby.

An older tenant on the first floor is so

bent over he looks like a question mark

who left a sentence, not his wife.

These days he can only face the ground.

When I asked how he was doing,

he said, not bad things are looking up.