dance

the windows clatter with
winter winds and rumbling train tracks,
and the impatient car horns shriek in
major thirds, eliciting a husky shout
from a guttural worndown voice
several floors below

and on the streets in the dimming sunlight
a weary mother holds an infant in her arms,
a toddler waddling by her side, hands held,
the troupe scurrying past the destitute and sick
and the unsteady drunks traipsing past them,

and from above, where i stand watching them,
the worn-out throngs and their ordinary steps
form a deep, precise, and delicate choreography –
a dance painted on the streets of the bustling city
led by the invisible thread of poignant life
and the story of individuals as part of the whole.