save the situation.
Working
Fernwood District.

Signing out & in. Not enough to make a living:
Climbing stairs
looking over Burnside a wide-angle like an angel.

From the bus stop
with its municipal
maps, unreadable pastels of the city

like drawers in a magical box.
Like pop-up cards:
box cars rust-orange to ocean-green ancient iron locks.

Making you forget the top of the news:
African child thrown away found in garbage can
where a dog gnawed the face off him.

Unbearable headlines begin to ignite like a Preservation Brass Band
as though you could burn the deed:
Check out. Kick the bucket? The only alternative to reading heinous crimes is blindsighting.

Consider that split-second
when tailings slough off, feathers, nails, walls peeling of paint.
You ride the bus above city's rim. Fairfield

the thing itself            a Body-Smile
like that morning you bought new green shoes
At the first station of dream, you danced in them

slipping ski-pole in one hand
surmounting ice:
size of the box car in the second dream

its burnt-orange, lime green
made it part of a dream train:
tonnage in this incarnation morphed into feathers
           sailing you
           into the Sweet Hereafter            the Great Beyond.