Was I ever real enough to see
a hummingbird hover
outside my room
certain that it was my
mother again
enough of a presence for
baby lizards
to leap from the sidewalk
like exclamations
startled by the shadow of me
to gape at a fallen sycamore leaf
big as Goliath’s Philistine hand
with all five fingers curled in a grasp
at the night before and
the past blown away
someone whose morning religion includes
a seagull perched like an asterisk
on the rooftop ridge of the AAA
across from my berth in
the Starbucks next door
a testament that we both had survived
the previous day in an uncertain world
and to landing here
once more this morning
holding on to
identity.
