In San Francisco, A Man Sweeps

The abandoned camp on our New England river
has a cracked trampoline once used as a table,
a sight so wonderful! … Not the spilled stuffing,

the craggy mountain in the mist
like a Chinese painting. Beauty unearthed
in the eye of the beholder. Behold, this picture

of a man in San Francisco, sweeping
swirling litter in the city’s famous gusts.
His clothing mortars a wall of suitcases

that teeter on top of a trash can.
Once, a nuke upstream by this New England river.
Now it’s clean, or cleaner. On the opposite shore,

a spit called Rainbow Beach
not for its colors, for its promise.
The length of the river always deceives us.

The man in San Francisco with broom and baseball cap,
perhaps homeless, perhaps could make a home
here by this river, but the goal of this ekphrastic poem

is to describe and do no more,
which means, do not discuss
why he is in this picture.

Do not let him move
past the trash, toward that mountain
shooting its disappearing peak out of the vapor.