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31. Rose
- University of Georgia Press
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155 & 31. Rose i want to be charmed by the city but I’m not. Not by the woman with the perky little dog who greets me on her travels, not by the man sleeping in the park as I run several times past, his encampment a brown sheet,a brown paper bag,a shopping cart with a symbolic fan that’s real, propped on its side, a few possessions near his head,boots,a shirt—by the third time around the baseball fields he’s stretching,one arm held up to the sun.Not by the cluster of birds in the dead fruit tree,starlings and sparrows and crows,companions in the morning that’s heating up with each circle around the fields. Not by the man rousing himself on a bench or the other adjusting his shoes near his feet, not by the handmade table propped by the Sisters behind their convent on two stumps, not by the single rose blooming in their garden. Not by the falling leaves of the sycamores, crumpling in the dry heat, not by the fountain spewing silver water, not by the little boy learning to walk right in front of our door, not by the blue jay calling in the morning or the fat spider strung up on the clematis and tomato on the deck. Not by two matching children with backpacks, both miniatures of their tall mother or the church smelling cool as I walk past up the street. Not by the word “lucky” scrawled in a sidewalk, not by putting one foot and then another into the letters as I walk. ...