There was one window
On about the seventh floor
Of the abandoned paperboard factory

Every window had been broken so far
Danny broke three
Clay two
Me one
Eric eight
But for that one window
On the seventh floor
Glaring at us
Daring us

Eric pitched a no-hitter
Against the Sievewright Sifters
Danny caught a foul at a Patrones game
Clay won a huge Bugs Bunny at the fair
(I was cut from the school's team but kept that to myself)

Still that window
Hovered
Unbroken
Spotless perhaps
Giving views
Of a muddy river
And sagging city
(Or would have
If anyone still worked there)

Then one day
We were walking
Just four kids
Walking
Where a crowd of a thousand
Would once mob
Each day at eight
Then at three
Then at eleven
But now never again

And that window was broken
Left with an open jagged entryway
About a foot in diameter
Just a little bit of each corner remaining
The northeast in dangling pieces
And I saw what did it
But didn't say
A dead pigeon lay near the empty Dumpster

I let them marvel
At whatever transient hobo hitchhiker
Might have come by
With a throwing arm
Like Nolan Ryan's

I was trying to impress Ella at the art reception
Telling her a fishing and then a hunting and then a garage saling story
When I notice her looking over my right shoulder
At

A non-descript male
Who like me
Wore no rings
Had his hair combed to the side

And made a somewhat believable attempt to understand
What was mounted on the east-side wall
I dreamed that night of a mob
Me allied with 10 tall strong men

Or at least taller and stronger than him
Tall and strong enough
To corner him at the cliff
by the site of the forgotten Revolutionary war skirmish

As we stood facing him
Trying to think of what we would do to hurt him
When suddenly the ground we stand on collapses and we go tumbling down
Limbs hitting limbs

Torsos slamming torsos
Until we're in a moaning pile
And what does the nondescript man noticed by Ella do
but throw us a rope or some kind of lifeline and pulls us up

And in gratitude I grab him by the hand
And pull
He tumbles
Laughing

And I walked away
Knowing he was okay down there below

Looking out the call-
center window I see blue
jays and cardinals

The snowshoe hare hid
In the whiteness but the wolf
Even whiter pounced

Rivaling gunfire
ten pairs of rock dove wings boom
and greet my presence

Shift begins: look how
Slow those seconds crawl: Shift ends:
See how they speed up

I went to a European restaurant recently
and it may have been in Europe too
It wasn't a bad meal
And the waiter presented me with a bill crowded with euros
Or maybe pounds
I looked at it
Then said to him
"How about paying me the bill you owe me?"
He gawked at me.
"How about paying me the bill for serving as your pressure valve. Do you know how many insurrections, how many assassinations we prevented by taking in your frustrated and disaffected?"
He continued to gawk at me.
So I continued.
"No, really. Do you know how much you owe us for saving you from the Kaiser, from ******, from Mussolini, from who knows how many more crazies?"
He gawked, not knowing whether to call the gendarmes or reach into his billfold.
I continued.
"How about the bill you owe us for showing some restraint? You know we could have hanged every **** and Fascist officer over colonel at least? But we didn't. Instead we turned them into Siemens executives and Fiat general managers."
He still gawked, poised to jump for a phone or maybe just shout real loud.
So I continued.
"How about the bill for making your mediocre artists into rich men and women? You know it's us who turned Abba into stars. It's we who built the Scorpions' mansions."
He finally said something.
"Scorpions don't live in mansions. They live in nests."
I got up and left, then paused outside,
rested the left sole of my Ferragamo shoes on a Ferro Concrete wall
And waited to get arrested by cops without guns