Steam Dreams
On a winter morning jaunt I saw
great gasps of steam
galloping into the air,
hanging there and
atom by atom
expiring.
Those white wisps wilted
into the sunrise, from their metal grates
and the wiry frame that lay atop.
Heaving.
Sighing.
Restless sleep, he lay broiling
in those clouds of heat
that warred with the frost around.
That third-world sauna,
that man-sized steamer,
I imagined his dreams floated up with the vapor
drifting away to the blue beyond.
It’s the perfect spot,
I thought,
for the sky to see your dreams
and the bones from which they boiled.