Roofs

Sewn straw, exact pattern. Fields of rice-sprigs evenly set, a mile of herringbone tweed. The town, a sea of gunmetal, fish-scale tiles. By morning each floor a casserole of pillows, coverlets, comforters, towels:    flown nests. Imprint of bodies, fading. They fold the beds away, the room waits empty all day. All day the bodies circle, leaving no impression on each other. Tooled in the foundry of the streets. School-caps, factory-packed subway, miracle train: one territorial imperative, an emperor’s. On his platform one yard square perched on a roof that slopes in waves of tiles up toward other tiled cascades, the karate student for  hours does running in place, deep knee bends on his surfboard perch. All his free time to make his body efficient, tight, exact, rising and falling, mint piston pumping in its shaft.