The Wizard
Twenty trots ahead of us on the cracked sidewalk
Where people spit and yell curses and sell their souls,
With a wrinkled smile, in he goes the Noachian glass door,
His first for the day on the first day of spring
With a purposeful gait towards the homely kitchen
He tips his black wizard hat off to the cook
“G’morning”, he says to the frail woman
Who’s busy with the eggs and the sweat on her brow
She hands him a brown paper bag of bacon and bread
Which he receives with his dark, calloused hands
Knowing that the joy it brings to the eager child
In the moth-eaten home is only something he would know
Weaving through the pedestrianized throughfare up to the corner
Where cars, like clockwork, stop at the dim, red light
A woman rolls down her window and nods lazily in his direction
To which he responds with a wave not missing a single step
A swift quarter of an hour passes and he returns
To the same street but not through the same door
In his arms a shiny box stamped “Fragile” is nestled
Over his shoulders, his black jacket damp with the rain
In and out the dwellings, up and down the stairs
He voyages through the joggers, the bikes and the buses
He has more steps around the old town in a day than us in a year
In a tediously repeating journey that puts honest coins in his pocket
As a wide-eyed kid learns to start with A and end with Z,
As a boy and a girl awkwardly turns into a man or a woman
The wizard travels with someone else’s bags, boxes, flowers
Or nothing at all in his hand, but always with a noble hat on his head