Stepping alertly like a deer
I move on the edge of a vanished structural perspective,
the ghostly debris of a more elevated
elevated transit than my own,
which kept Third Avenue both self-effacing and loud,
before manhole-cover smoke 
turned to cappuccino steam.
The present traffic seems even more alien than I feel,
as it whips up the middle of the thoroughfare
where the shadows used to be: 
Previas, Camrys, Altimas, Tercels, 
Acuras, Celicas, Supras, and Maximas
appropriating linguistically evocative space;
and then an anachronistic Cressida --
with a Troilus sputtering along behind, autosuggestively . . .

Yes, well, it would seem as if my rum-soaked brain
were not fermenting on all four vats this morning,
as it transports me on down to 29th Street
on figurative fumes;
where at the corner first a Probe
and then a Prelude wait for the light
to take the story up north and out of town,
while, unaffected by the narrative,
I am stranded like a bookmark,
as when the Aztecs in their unending cycles of 20 days
placed "in between" any two of them
the name of an animal
with whom they shared the continuing saga of Mexico.