Union Square
Dawn is a peeping tom, intruding
blink by blink. Truth’s spy lighting
its flares, shocking the naked.
They hide their eyes and cover
their breasts, reach for clothing.
In alleys and archways, homes
of the homeless, they feel the burn
of binoculars as its lamps expose
their barren fields. On church steps,
they sense the sunbeams steal
their beauty in a sudden gospel of light.
Revelation spreads the shining threads
of its religion, stitching the centers
and corners of bodegas and basements
with filigrees of embroidered reality.
They squint, the actors who play
in the theater of deflecting darkness.
They long for the veil that covers
day’s face, its pimples and pockmarks.
They are the unwelcome, and cherish
the hissing masks of midnight
that strip them for love and twist
them with ecstasy. Lost lepers
who become spotless in the medicine
of starlight, healed and pure.
Home again.