BALCONY SCENE

Rain rolled in from the mountain all afternoon and left the city
before evening divided, shaded in gradations of gray, rich ladies

in black glasses over salmon impersonated celebrities, weeds peeked out
of the pavement like clumps of angry hair, the threadbare sun was a globe

of discarded fruit someone threw, and the everywhere flowers
I’d come to resent appreciably sprawled across the panoramic view,

all of them purple, proverbially beautiful, but nevertheless metaphoric,
each an indication of an absent man’s hand.

When I looked back at my martini, all the ice in my glass
had dissolved. Like a partial history, I thought. A crowd

of tuxedoed boys at the bar door formed, surveyed the scene
for single girls, then lavishly left. I paid the check and walked my fever

to the balcony rail. Where the wind greeted me, I was stony,
a personal memorial against an animal cold.