Spring on 28th Street

In the park, a rabbit’s eye 
stares among last year’s dried weeds,
startled yet still.

A pendulous raindrop
at a new birch leaf’s bending tip
enfolds the sun—and falls with it to earth.

At a five-story cave of construction, 
a man in white coveralls and a red hard hat
climbs a yellow steel scaffold
to vanish among black girders.

A bead-braided girl with a bare brown belly
sways on a street corner,
entranced by earbuds.

An ambulance siren breaks over birdsong,
and a pale, puffy-eyed woman
eating Chinese take-out on a bench in the sun
suspends her chopsticks and whispers an Ave, 
“now and at the hour of our death, amen,”
her lips forming silent blossoms
like the flowering dogwood.

by Cheryl W Ruggiero