LA: sidewalk

we could start with Byzantium
           or the bone
on the sidewalk
         we could follow the
skeleton
       down into the dark birth of the world
all the souls that lived and died
     for the curvature of the rib cage
along the arching of the calf

it's a weakness: we especially
      who crawl in the gutters
          see ourselves as refuse, it's tempting
to say we are innocent waste. we are not--
    are rather, the ones who crouch
  as in every city
         along the sidewalks, unseeing
 sifting the litter,

and that is what I was coming to:
the sidewalks.

       that are born in the creases of the ridge-line
come cascading down
       into the Boulevards
           it would not be wrong
  to think of wetlands
        in Venice the islands
 demanded canals
       --these hills, preoccupied
wanted nothing,
  and those who came dug trenches
and whirlpools, and hung the great channel freeways
 on the rocky spines, and wrought the islands
from the crumbling,
                                   concrete soil
           and gave us necessity.