Only a Monday can you park
so it looks like you abandoned
your ride in a murk of pavement.
Don’t call it a sea. No tide
washes a concrete shore.
Coffee breeze and grease reveal
that however hipster, the eggs
still plop from a bird living
mostly in shit. Street sweepers
are the thrum in these lanes
hungover from Saturday beers
and Sunday mimosas
and the drift of Ubers under lindens
and pears now waking to spring.
Only so much can be reborn,
only so many egg v. chicken
arguments, only one renaissance
per decade in a city now known
for rebirth. Old friend, we often
met and talked about our kids,
our jobs, our failures over coffee,
the ridiculous and sublime.
Our cars parked in the same lot
are the only ones at this hour—
so maybe after all it is a low tide,
an ebbing as our sun lilts elliptic,
at the far end of the curve,
not far enough to deprive us heat,
just enough to lengthen the shadows,
cast our table in twilight.