New/old (There's a Polaroid in everything)

There's something outside, tingling and singing in
the arctic night air.
I am a foreigner in my own town. Something indicates
to me that I am elsewhere, alone, someone else perhaps.
I crunch across frozen mud to the steps of the
video store, then return, toss the rented film on the
passenger seat
like an old pro.

The ground is littered with icy cakes of snow,
like abandoned mattresses laid end to end.
This place is new, though old,
foreign, though familiar.
It could be anywhere.
I wear brown mittens and the polar skies bite
at me.

There's a Polaroid in everything:
the diffuse glow of red traffic lights--
small red giants
reflected off my frosted windshield and through my glasses
until a dull glow batters my eyes;
the exhaust spouting from the car beside me,
idling at that same dying traffic light;
the plumes of laundry heat and furnace steam,
erupting upwards from ancient ramshackle buildings,
spiraling staircases of smoke;
the two boys in jumpsuits,
beating palms together to keep their fingers alive,
standing outside the state liquor store,
exhaling clouds of vapor--

Everything is translucent;
this strange world a fog,
a winter landscape seeded with sparse
signs of life.

Lights dim and heavy eyelids close all around me,
and I traverse rocky black asphalt that
smiles up at just me,
only me--
it is worth seeing, observing, watching and

waiting for.