For Dave Harrity
There was no election, no voting
booths’ black curtains, the metal
chink
of rings sliding closed.
No appointment or inauguration
to
indicate the moment he had become
the mayor of the city inside his life.
He
woke one morning with keys
in his hand, spent the day jangling
into
every lock, residents looking up
from their televisions & ticker tape
to
say, So, you’re the one. He soon
found himself driving the neighborhoods,
blocks
of public housing, the power
to condemn or endow like a perched bird
on
his shoulder, past high rises,
empty warehouses, smokeless
stacks
of forgotten industry. All day
he drove, gained a vision for the city,
what
to raze or remake—
children’s parks, the river cleaned up
into
a refracting countenance of moon,
something for the people inside him
to
stroll alongside come summer nights.
He could already see it, could hear
the
music on the restaurant verandas
where everyone was dancing.