The cop’s cruiser patrols east. 
Saturday night may turn
to drunks and domestics.
Wet streets, tire slosh, midnight traffic.
Three youths in bandanas and black jackets,
a man in a motorized wheelchair with a whole earth flag. 
She pinches her thigh, tight blue pants on slick seat, 
a fat test before her next fitness challenge.
Voodoo Doughnuts is open all night.  
Coffee. Maple bars. Or carrots and broccoli in her bag. 
 
Sunken graves, tipped stones,
the pioneer graveyard promises this man only an owl
gives a hoot at a lean January moon 
hung in wisps of shredded cloud. 
At the service center they call him William.
He rustles in his pack, hauls out a tarp
and tucks a slab of hand-me-out carrot cake from St. Andrews
in the lip of plastic beside his knife sharpened 
to shine – talismans against wary night with bite.  
One yank on knitted cap under sweatshirt hood.
Blankets from his cart, not too damp, unfold on tarp. 
He rolls up like a cigar and closes down
hooded eyes against jungle blood. 
He’ll be gone before the jogger’s Jack Russell
sniffs crumbs of sweet cake.
 
The great horned owl waits 
atop a Douglas fir, glad to be rid of a mob
of crows at the golf course. He shifts 
at crackle of tarp and plastic
near the mausoleum’s wrought-iron fence.  
He hears a siren, a man snoring. He swivel-blinks
for vole, mouse, the low-belows of graveyards
calling forth launch, float on silent wing
to feed on this, the end of day.
                        

She spent five arctic nights
in a woman’s shelter, but creatures sniffling
on cranky cots, overloaded
her, a male guard at the gate.   
 
With the warm blow-in of southern rains,
she moved to a nook in her one dry place.
She’s a wrung-out sponge, blotting up damp
in sweatshirts, tights, stretch pants,
one too-small jacket and the church-lady-knitted cap. 
Relentless hours of hard rain erode
her gut-starch, her cross is choking tight. 
 
One palm on the handle of her cart
keeps her from flowing.   
Her fingerless glove swipes 
a dripping nostril. Her tongue plugs
emptiness where a fist blew out a canine tooth. 
 
Keep body and soul pasted together, 
each wanders like her gray kitten.  
She refuses to look at street kids’ 
brindled pit bulls. 
What she cannot see will not bite.  
She whispers to good people she once knew
and argues with the bad. 
 
When sleep knocks her down, her night hag tiptoes
in, reigning hostess in a teetering house.
Both seldom know where the bathroom is,
never stare out windows and assume 
that every shaky roof must fall.  
She hears hag stories of lost sisters.  
Now and then they trade clothes. 
 
When morning comes, night hag hovers
behind her left shoulder, a burden-crushing fog 
hangover of buzzing street light nights. 
She hums and No One, day stalker,
always hears.