1994, 15th & Chestnut

A woman is lying on the sidewalk
a paramedic is working  on her          gift of breath to the dead
shabby rags    bundle of blankets on the walk
cardboard box where not long before she lay asleep –
a rosewood recorder with an ivory handle clutched in her fist

passersby stand in a circle, transfixed... 

a simple wish to follow a story to its end... almost indifferent
to its outcome how else explain how someone
no longer part of the world inhabited by those keeping vigil
invisible until that moment -- should--at the hour of her death
become in all her strangeness--a presence to ...