I am being cut into little pieces by the wind
and scattered over the city.
I am not snoring drunk under the overpass,
or huddled on a cot at the women’s shelter, a black 
eye giving away all my secrets.
I am not sleeping standing on one leg like the heron 
with the slicked-back Elvis haircut.
I am awake like all the glimmering fish in the estuary, 
swimming to unheard music,
unblinking and voiceless through
each successive
eat-and-be-eaten
world:
opal.                            Emerald.                            Ebony.
Awake like the fool in the electric
blue business suit who stands at the edge
of Lake Merritt
fishing
at 3 a.m.
in the heart of the city. He grins to himself and casts his line 
farther and farther out
as if he could hook the whole
glinting purple lake
the clouds, the cars, the scudding night
and reel it in, sing to it, and eat it.