Perry Street Poem by Richard Cole

Late afternoon, soft light, a little rain
dripping quietly under the trees.
I'm early for a business appointment,
so I wander down Perry Street, peeking inside
the other world of townhouses: books, massive ferns,
glimmers of brass in the velvet shadows.
Sometimes through the back windows
I see a garden in the sunlight — pleasures
of reflection, elegant and protected,
with massive tangles of roses, wisteria, and vine.

In the framing shop at the corner, I pause
to watch a younger man arranging
a folio of elegant, Egyptian prints.
Blond hair. Ivory shirt perfectly pressed.
He's beautiful just sitting there, so
serious, unaware that I'm watching.
For a moment, I envision life with a man
like that, a relationship of unconnected loveliness
in a neighborhood where I don’t belong,
each day like the beauty
of an empty page in the hour just before twilight.

I look at the time. The light is fading.
'We cannot fall out of the world, '
and yet we do: At a French restaurant
across the street, two dishwashers stand
outside the kitchen door in their tired aprons,
smoking in silence, watching the clouds.
I move slowly away and then, in a shop window,
I see dark eyes blinking: two snow white doves
hidden in a bamboo cage. They shudder
and coo, arranging, rearranging
their folded wings.