Today, he is back on Halstead Street
seventy years ago, on the west side of Chicago,
where he has a dirt yard, and a fence he can poke through,
a meadow of bright rags bordered by concrete,
every weed quadrupled, coarse, welcoming
and spine-tipped; then he is home again,
in his studio in Washington, DC, where he’s memorized
street signs laid out alphabetically, and yesterdays
Xed out on his desk calendar,
and he hears the sound of sirens
and trucks backfiring, familiar faces
peering out through the fogged panes
of a city bus as people swiftly ride by—
and every once in a while,
he packs all of his things up into a single cloth bag,
all of his jeans, shirts, and pencils, art supplies, shaving cream
and waits for me to come and take him home.