Beijing

I hold to

the girls with their ratted hair

clustering around the storefronts

selling cheap knock-offs--at the bus stops

refer back to

the man who used to play

his saxophone, down by the canal

while the older man painted characters

in water, on the bluish-gray of the pavement

and the man who was kicking

thighs-bulging across the tow-path

and the one shouting out the dictionary

to learn English, and the one howling

out the soprano for some Beijing opera

at five in the morning, and those people

down in the boat, pulling fish out of

the freezing murk

and the men striding puff-chest along

the sidewalk--because they knew they owned

the city, and squads of policemen

practicing Kung Fu and Tai Jit Su

in the square, late into the night

--I dodged them in the morning

when they were jogging, and

I was jogging the other way

--hold them

these streets, those streets

and hear the steps echoing

voices clamoring, breath puffing

and my own steps echoing

even now, in the desert

sifting the debris for fossils

I find myself rubbing

the fossil ridges

in my hands.