You Can't Buy Shoes in a Painting

You can't even buy a soda. You can only see these things, see a mother steer her son to the car, his head cocked licking his ice cream. Earlier, driving, trying to keep between two cornfields, I couldn't see myself into a map, couldn't be anywhere in it, though I knew all the patient states between us. Pigeons sit high on a mill's peaked roof, spaced even as beads. They can stand that close to each other, but looking at them you wouldn't know it. Would you.