Boehm: Crawling to Byzantium, 1978

There's a wild man in 407,
belly like a Biafran baby's.
His flat fingertips
unknot gyred twine,
lowering the dream mitten
that disco-queens fill with stone,
and he eats, seeing and tasting bread.
He is loath to lose the skyline,
being a birdwatcher
who has yet to make a sighting.
Oh, sure, birds,
but not THE bird, you understand,
not the Golden Song Bird.
I told him, "This ain't Byzantium."
"Yeah," he said. "Where are we, anyway?"
"Denver," I said.
He lowered the mitten;
the string snapped taunt.
He turned, grey sand in his beard,
"Have YOU seen it?"
"Nope, not yet," I said.
"Have some bread," he said.


(The Sentinel-Record, 1982; Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1983)