On Mckinney Avenue a mirror-sheen
of summer rain reconstitutes
myrtles in bloom. One pink blossom falls,
its holographic twin below the surface
rises, and they merge,

bridging the millimeter chasm where orange
cumulonimbi wander, miles
down in the shallows. Sidewalk paved with sky,
this heavenly mirage turns a newspaper sheet
to pulp and doppelgangs

towers at sunset, westward windows molten,
rippling when a rickety trolley
clangs to a stop, and a woman disembarks,
doused in a gown of diamonds. Meanwhile doves,
their feathers soft as receipts

tucked in a wallet, perch on a telephone wire
and ruffle from their wet grey wings
droplets that bubbling upward as they sink
riddle with brief concentric simmerings
the equivocal vitreous,

the asphalt’s and the eye’s—inverted images
counterbalancing concrete substance
with style. So that this walkway aquarelle,
distinctively selfless as the mockingbird’s
recombinant pastiche,

flushed as with beta waves when evening lamps
rekindle their tungsten synapses
above, lays out an immaterial stage
for walking on clouds, a downward skyhigh glimpse
reconceiving the real.