Mary Kinzie

Older now, he is among us in diminished form, clothes sagging, hat large on the fine head He likes the largest stores             acres of socks and tuna             where high girders look down on him also                        who pushes his cart and leans on it a little . . . something sacramental about the belittling perspective          something heroic about the high shadows in the niches of the corrugated roof beneath which under spotlights that don't spread far he moves with the people who comb through the aisles               pulling down unwieldy batches of single things                   to last them through cold time that can't be trusted There he is at the far end of an avenue of obelisks of paper head cunningly mobile like a bird's                         eyes quick like one beading on flecks that might be the morsels that it needs or on grains                           or seeds At this its faltering morse of chirrups                     but no long address only the same few wordchains at my feet water water water millet beak millet crack millet air down danger aieeeeeeee