Nick Benavides's porch's sink. San Francisco, Calif.

two weeks notice, or ballad of the navigator's glow-globe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

- Edgar Allan Poe

stoplights

sitting at the rosecranz, nimitz intersection, i looked out my left window. three homeless men stood in the shade of the building that had once been a grocery store. one of the men adjusted one of the others' collars and brushed the shoulders of his fraying jacket. the third man fed some small birds that had begun gathering around his feet. the poignancy of the moment hit me in the chest like a hot ember. then the shifting light propelled traffic forward, and my car moved with the surge. i felt happy and i felt sad. i felt. i felt. i felt. so very alone.

i have found the point where the earth and the sky touch.