(Poem, later)

It was as if the bank teller could not see me
neither could the two girls speaking
Spanish at the information desk.
I was invisible to the hairdresser
except for my hair. In the mirror
I saw the manicurist, but she didn’t look
up from her client’s cuticles
and the bald man in the gallery
talking on a cellphone to a creditor
only saw my money.

In the over-heated parking lot
Camrys and Cadillacs ignored me
sinking their tires into the tarmac
so did the scarlet striped with yellow
leaves of the croton bushes
and the curbside shopping carts.
If the ospreys on their nest
on the light pole had stopped mating
for a minute they might have seen me.
It was as if I had vanished into
the earth when it was not watching:
in reality, too,
the earth was not watching me.