You expect the leg-wobble
        & delirium. You expect
                 a record winding down.

No easy shot, that backlit
        pacing—the day's tarnished coppers

                 so electric they over-brim
the bristled coat—& still
        the park-keeper manages

                 a direct hit. But the dart's no
tranquilizer, & so the jaguar's stride

        only escalates to the claws'
                 quickened snare.
That's the news footage

        memory plays & replays
                 this walk: heightened security,

& this man will thus inoculate
        his whole safari park—kitten
                 to camel—against missiles packed

with disease. Midtown,
        all the front pages barking

                 invasion, the parks clogged
with dissenters & chanting, & the spare arcs
        of trees doing little to soften

                 the city's stark verticals.
But then a sight to jar

        even that frenzied jaguar
                 from my mind. Burnt
orange—a shock of bronze leaves

        decking the trees for a block.
                 A movie crew's grafted to bare trunks

false branches (indiscriminately
        maples) so for the length
                 of their shoot it's the thick

of autumn's emblazoning.
        & so on the cusp of war

                 (a conflict they'll call it,
as though it entailed
        spousal insult & not

                 thousands uprooted & scarred,
& this at best), on the cusp

        of war the street offers up
                 this mock-burgeoning.
Something consoling

        about standing in their synthetic
                 shade, to know it'll never pass.

Let's face it: there's no inoculation,
        no immunity for us or those
                 we claim to help,

& the most we can hope for
        is the pause these trees afford.

                 But we know this already,
don't we—that any show of stasis
        is always a lie? A week

                 & they'll all be down,
those leaves ablaze. Down and cleared away

        like the hand-lettered signs
                 of picketers, their leaflets & campaigned
rage. Years from now, the coming weeks

        may blanch to a blur. But these two, fused, will always
                 stay: the riled crowd & their paired-off

rally, this animal panicking
        in figure eights, biting at the sting.
                 How we march these caged streets.

How this stubborn grove
        holds us, for a moment,

                 outside the vanishing.