This tidy city, perched on a tendril
of the Northeast Megalopolis
hosts no pigeons.
She wonders at the implications—
that this entire category of metaphor is missing,
no spot of oil floating on a parking lot puddle.
An iridescent language would be perfect 
for this edged 
jack-hammered landscape.
Sure, there are squirrels and sparrows brown,
cicadas, even 
fingernail shavings.

How does one account 
for the absence of something
lodged in the heart—something 
that ought to be there
but simply isn’t
never was, or simply long-gone,
which she thinks
is different from when he leaves
because the two of them
linger on—vintage gray shadows,
shoulder bumping enthusiasm,
ambling downtown on preposterous 
red feet—doplic, 
Mom-Mom would have said.
Scant fallen crumbs.