Shadow Of Cranes

Bellevue has a square heart
Fed not by a tangled mass
But by the blinking of traffic lights.
I have driven arterial roadways
In search of the blemish, the scar,
The backdoor, the alley
But all I’ve found are sidewalks,
Empty sidewalks who watch
With the eyes of a newborn
As the traffic slowly passes.
Bellevue is Adonis without a head
A marble heap of flesh and bone
Finely wrought, a model specimen,
It’s genitals removed by those who think
They know better.
In pancake corrals
I’ve sat and pondered the soul,
I’ve sat and wondered
If there wasn’t a mother somewhere
In this city, her breasts full,
All womb and all pudenda,
Getting ready to give birth
To something animate and frail
In the shadow of the cranes.