Noon offers no shadows,

no double meanings,

nothing oblique.

The sun-bleached town

forfeits tri-dimensionality.

7-year-old Jesus, mother illegally

waiting on tables at the diner,

father increasingly drunk,

doodles the sidewalk

in white chalk.

A suit-and-tie man rushes out

of City Hall. Chilled like a melon,

he smiles cordially through reforms—

welfare, taxes, minimum wages.

“Do you like the desert summer, Jesus?”

“You should try the New York blizzard,”

says Jesus. “Last winter, before we came here.”

Jesus sings to himself out of tune

about tomorrow, and someone’s love

moving west, and the all-around world.

“Always going west, we end up coming

back from the East,” he sings to himself.

The chalk is dust now. We all regain

some shadow, oblique aureole

of a shortly-past-noon sun going west

over shelterless Jesus, mother illegally

working at the diner.