The City Keeps Its Receipts

somebody has left a receipt
in the bus window
folded into a boat
and the boat is going downtown
on the six-ten

the rain outside has no receipt
nobody can prove who ordered it
it runs down the courthouse
past the names cut into stone
which must have hurt the stone a little

a woman in green shoes
holds a sleeping child
whose whole opinion of the city
is warm collarbone
and the engine under everything

i used to count the red lights
between one job and the next
as if enough of them
would qualify me for something
as if there were a desk somewhere
where a tired man could turn in his stopping

there is a desk somewhere
there is always a desk
and behind it a small plant
leaning toward the only square of sun
in the department

my father kept bent nails
in a coffee tin
said you could straighten them
and you could
if you had two hammers
and some of the afternoon

all these years later
i am still finding uses
for an afternoon
still carrying the tin
from one address to another
though the nails are mostly gone

outside the window a crane
lifts a bundle of windows
into the gray
somebody is building a place
to look out of
before there is anybody there

the child wakes
sees the paper boat
says fish
and the woman says boat
and the child says fish again
with the patience of a person
explaining water

yes i think
we have been naming things too quickly
calling this a commute
that a childhood
this box of screws and old keys
a drawer to clean out
when half of it still opens something

at the next stop
an old man climbs aboard
with a birthday cake
held level in both hands
and everybody moves a little
without being asked

the bus leans into the turn
we lean the other way
the cake stays level
somewhere a woman will see her name
written in blue sugar
and for one minute believe
the whole troublesome city
has remembered

i get off before the river
the boat goes on without me
carrying its list
of things somebody bought
one ordinary evening
and had enough money for