Claustrophobic in a passage

between brick and clapboard walls,

 

I observe a slot of street,

hoping this narrow focus

 

will help me to understand

random arrangements of objects

 

clustered in the broader world.

A pale truck parked at the curb,

 

a white two-story house, a slice

of apartments towering beyond.

 

Two black exclamations

of chimney suggest excitements

 

I can’t define. Power lines web

the sky at the mouth of the passage.

 

I could shrug back into the light,

ascend the few steps to the street,

 

and resume my three dimensions.

But in this slender place I’m flat

 

enough to escape myself;

so why reckon with textures

 

rougher than brick and clapboard,

and space too great for me to fill?