Pilgrim

I spied the sedentary vessels
murmur in the bathroom, ghastly

in their gurgles, whispering, and at funerals
obfuscating, pay this

taxes in your finest black, in backyards eating
barbecue, loading down

their plastic cups with
maverick yellow beer.

In other yards were shaggy mutts
snapping jowls, electric, mauling

angles, rolling roughly, awesome
fanged attacks. Behind the last boundary,

(a whitish fence) the night was
poking down the sun, and the house

this fence surrounds is
the house of love, now an empty space

where my body emptied out
a word or two, before coming

through the night, alone, riding
this thin black bike.