The Consultant for the Mayor

You can never tell

By the looks of a frog

How high it can leap,

Said her Auntie Ott.

Haley's hair flips up and down

As she moves in her hard shoes,

Her leather coat for winter

Is lengthy and sways, some stains

Mottling the bottom—

Elegant windows in decline

That at one time

One could climb through,

French imitation

Nailed shut for decades. In shadow

Pigeons peck in dirty snow

Massed against the closest wall.

What her hair will look like someday,

She surmises. But otherwise

Isn't troubled by the future.

Don't walk like a duck,

Men don't like it, said Auntie Ott.

Not necessarily, responded her grandmother,

As she brushed a crumb onto a saucer—

Playing cards, stories of earlier poverty.

As a girl she pretended

To be as worried as they

Whether Bobby would be drafted

And killed in the war.

Maybe she's important in art

Or decoration, supposes the student

Adjusting his pack—

As the light changes, he steps out

But she banks around the corner

Behind him, purseless, gloveless,

Passing a restaurant, a coin store,

A key shop—owners staring over the street

Wishing they were younger.

Or lived in an earlier time.

Which is partly the fault

Of late winter. Clittering ice

In trees of Veteran's Park. . .

Lightly swinging her arms now,

Heading uphill, growing distant,

Like a figure studied

In Auntie Ott's Utrillo print—

Stick-like, scarecrow-like—

To her right, a converted house

Looking vaguely like a shrunken

Monticello. . . Cream-colored barriers

Of plowed snow as sun sprays

More volume. . . A moment of deception

There's not much that can be done,

Said the city, when the oaks

Were removed for curb repair.

The dome fell off the theatre.

A policeman peering east, frozen.

Just as the museum is shuttered

Next to the blank bowling alley

(which is our other perspective).

Haley has never felt trapped,

Though the possibilities, occasionally,

Have skirted about like sparrows.

A jet crosses the sky.

Followed by its vibration.

What she found sustaining

She learned in college.

Where she goes is no one's business

Either.

Neither is she worshipped

And adored—Auntie Ott

Would be dismayed.

Though not entirely