City Late

Travelling the well-known road

I am glad to thrust my chin into my collar

Gather my shoulders about my ears

And move like a tortoise, encompassed and slow,

Without vision beyond the steamy windows.

I thrust my eyes into the menacing print

Acknowledging war

And under the tortoise shell

Uneasy that somewhere

There's fear, and young men running

And plums hanging ripe with the bloom upon them.