August 1983: Saginaw Street, Flint

                after John Updike

When under the green shade of the Plasma Center’s awning
The ageless haggard men lean against butcher-papered windows
And pass from the hand of one skinny drained arm to the next
A brown bottle in a defeated paper bag,

When Dale’s Health Food and Karmel Korn, where you push past
The sweet and salty popcorn and slabs of fudge-under-glass to reach
The bins of soy flour and granola, blows its hot sweet smell down the block,
And the aroma meets and mingles with the eye-watering wallop
Of curling and straightening that drifts out of the Beauty College,

When the Weather Ball turns red (warmer temperatures ahead) on the roof
Of the bank and everybody knows it’s going to be a scorcher,
And the fibble and dub-a-dub of rubber tires on the red brick street
Announces every car like a drumroll,

Then even the tiny chop on the Flint River shoots sun-sparks up like a Roman candle
And the rustling of books in the library way down Kearsley Street sends a breeze
Puffing into the open windows of parked cars with panting dogs,
And you step into the ladies’ room before lunch to peel off your nylons

Then stride down the street swinging bare legs under your skirt,
Feet flopping in spike-heeled sandals, while a white haze, the exhalation
Of distant grass and trees, condenses to a gauzy veil and hangs high and
still,

Nine feet in the air, a City cop on a chestnut horse—a horse!—
And coming around the corner from a side street, a white-helmeted head
Both cop’s and horse’s heads nodding with each clop of iron on brick,

As if assenting to the rhythm of baked leather and sweat, as if in perfect agreement
That the horse’s rippling flank should blaze like burnished copper in the
sun.

Kathryn Schwartz